Teenagers are growing more anxious and depressed - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21731693-could-they-hold-culprit-their-hands-teenagers-are-growing-more-anxious-and <comment><USER5> Did this trend start with social media? We are doing lots of stuff to teenagers these days that we didnt do before. They are beholden to expectations far narrower than we were.

We treat them as adults in school (by making them responsible for their own performance through grading and measuring) from a very young age, yet we don't really cut the umbelical cord (grant them autonomy) until they're in their twenties.

Socially they're expected to act in their long term interest, at the expense of social and emotional self-realization (i.e. "maturing") for a long time, and the only alternative is failure (now on prominent display on social media heh...)

<comment><USER6> I think more dangerous than social media is the omnipresence of image recording devices. When I made a mistake as a teenager, people might laugh at me for a day or two, sooner or later it was forgotten. Today's teenager make a mistake and if they are unlucky, their shame gets immediately exposed to the whole world, forever.

I think this has to contribute a lot to today's anxiousness of teenagers - <USER2> hasn't been caught yet, should feel in constant danger. I would be anxious about this if i was a teenager today.

My kid is one and a half right now, in a few years I will have to explain him how important it is not to get taped doing stupid things...

<comment><USER7> Hopefully "don't take pictures/videos of your peers/friends without their (implied) permission" becomes a more widely distributed social more for the next generation. Can't believe it isn't already.

<comment><USER8> Why would any teenager pass up the opportunity to post a video that will garner lots of attention?

<comment><USER9> Maybe because he/she isn't a dick? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you take a train or a bus, or are in any other public space, you may notice that a bunch of people (young and old) spend their time staring into their phones. And most of the time, if you glance at their phone, you'll see they're on Instagram. They're staring into this machine fantasizing about some image of how great life is, meanwhile their real life is passing them by. And they wonder why they're not getting all the likes.

As the current president would say, SAD.

<comment><USER11> Or, perhaps they are being inspired. Planning their own art or adventure. If you're sitting on a train, why not? (Is reading a book equally objectionable, or is going to a museum?) It's rather offensive to judge people about whom you know nothing. (As is quoting President Trump as if he is an authority on anything.)

<comment><USER12> As this is n = 1, take this with a grain of salt, but as a high school teacher I can tell you that's definitely not what teenagers are doing with their phones the majority of the time. Your view is very optimistic; for the most part, kids are sending each other snaps and checking IG for high school drama, fashion, make up, gossip, memes, and those fitness inspo pics. That last observation comes from the fact that apart from teaching math, I occasionally teach a fitness class and get kids showing me these ridiculously fit (usually not natural) people pics on IG. They also really like YouTube.

<comment><USER13> That may be what _most_ of your students are doing, but does not preclude the fact that there are ways to use social media (including Instagram) effectively, and that there are certainly people who are doing this.

<comment><USER12> Yes, agreed. But what I'm saying is that, I don't believe the average teenager uses social media in a "healthy" nor "educational" type of way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Having directed this to my teenaged younger sibling (he is intelligent and expressive) he explained in his view, teenagers have a poor prognosis for their career prospects and are aware of this. Technology allows them to be aware that life doesn't look good for them, that they cannot look forward to retirement, to a stable long term career, that the amount of education and debt they will need to accrue is ever-increasing, that their success in this society will rely on using and stepping on others who will now have less as a result, if not in their own community then in the international stage. He attends one of the best schools in the nation and he believes most of his peers feel the same pressures both of their career prospects and their place in the greater international stage and all the things that are wrong with it that they cannot change because they cannot be in a position to change with any sense of ease (e.g. to have enough money to buy jeans not made via human exploitation requires an amount of success that feels as if it is becoming rarer,and even then how do you help people who cannot afford them to avoid exploiting other humans)

All in all, I think a growing awareness of the worlds problems and their individual struggles to be in a position for themselves is a pretty good reason for teenagers to feel more anxious and depressed.

<comment><USER15> _> their success in this society will rely on using and stepping on others who will now have less as a result_

That reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of economics. While there are indeed predatory business models where this is true - casinos etc. - <USER3> highly successful people and businesses become successful by _creating_ value, not siphoning it from others.

<comment><USER14> Highly successful businesses like Apple, which are closely related to Foxconn and the horrors of labor there. That we know many elements that go into our technology may be sourced from dubious environments, unsafe working conditions, potentially human rights violations and war. That's what he meant when I asked him. By consuming anything in the system one is contributing to the systems oppression internationally, and there isn't an easy way to stop.

<comment><USER15> _Foxconn and the horrors of labor there_

Would you prefer that they starve to death because they have no work? I assure you, that's worse than working at Foxconn.

<comment><USER14> So teenagers have to comfort themselves by knowing that they subject people to either starve or dehumanizing living conditions/work that strips people of any sense of self or comfort. This definitely helps with anxiety and depression.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'd say this is more a problem with human nature, that social media is just exposing at a whole new level. It's basic biology to want to be the best, in order to attract the best mate etc. Social media has blown open a world where not only is there always someone better, more attractive, more fun, more social-able etc than you but also that the levels these people reach will always be unobtainable for you.

<comment><USER17> This is how I feel about all the people on HN who are vastly smarter than me.

<comment><USER18> I like being around the guys here on HN. I don't mind that they are smarter than I. You always learn something new and are surrounded by the latest in Tech. I'd say just surrounding yourself with the people here will in turn make you smarter/knowledgeable.

<comment><USER17> Oh, I agree. I learn a lot here. It's the best corner of the web.

<comment><USER19> Have you seen any other forums with smart people on the web?

<comment><USER17> Nothing this active. I'd love to know if there are more hotspots like this one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My wife just left me due to the rabbit hole that Instagram has taken her down. She's a completely different person now. Social media addiction is real, and scary.

<comment><USER21> Can you expand on this? I don't really understand how x lead to y as i don't have much idea about social media addiction at all or its effects.

<comment><USER20> We moved to a new city. I work full time (from home) as a SWE. She is a stay at home mom. She met new people on IG in our new city, made friends. I thought it was great.

My wife has a hole deep inside her from years of childhood abuse. She has no career, is early 20s like myself, and has yet to figure herself out.

As the months went by, she filled that hole more and more with her connections on IG and less with our family/relationship. Her follower count grew from a few hundred to 10,000. She started spending more and more time taking videos for her followers.

It got to the point where I would come home from work, ask how her day was, she'd say "fine." And then about an hour later or later that night, there would be a multi paragraph long post of hers about her day. She put more effort into her relationship with IG than she did with us. It makes sense, I mean shit, every single post she would get hundreds of comments saying all sorts of nice things. I tried to keep up. But IG filled that hole in her heart much faster than I could.

Keep in mind we weren't just some random marriage. We were best friends for a year before we even started dating.

She decided she is "pansexual" and "polyamorous" and no longer wanted to be "tied down". She refused to leave me because I pay all the bills. So I suffered for a few months while she brought home different people. Eventually I got my own apartment and walked out.

Even though I technically walked out at the end, she left me mentally long ago. She now spends all her free time with her IG cliques instead of getting a job or going to school...or anything worthwhile really. Just more photoshoots. More posting. More spending.

She doesn't have an remorse or regret to her. She thinks she is on the path to her greatness, blah blah blah, monogamy is ownership, all these things she just keeps repeating from memes she reads from "woke" accounts. Fake facts and stats from "sources" that are just anonymous accounts posting bullshit. Millenials (my generation) browse this shit, read it, and believe it without any doubt in their heads. Meanwhile I'm paying about ~$4k a month in just rent and car bills for her. Not including anything else.

OH and did I mention - the main girls she hangs out with from IG, 4 of them, are ALL going through divorces in the past two months. 4 of them. And they don't see any connection between them. Either they are lying to my face and have some sort of secret pact going on to be single...or that's some seriously strong groupthink right there.

Social media echo chambers are real.

Edit - I left out this private details because I originally deemed it unnecessary to share, but I think it might explain why I'm being so "nice". She thinks she's lesbian, or bi. She's been bringing home women. She has a girlfriend now. If it was guys then yeah I think it would be easier to just be all pissed off. But the fact that it's women, rational or not, for some reason makes it more confusing for me to deal with. Sorry for leaving this out.

Thank you for all the feedback and advice. All if it is extremely helpful.

<comment><USER22> > Meanwhile I'm paying about ~$4k a month in just rent and car bills for her. > Not including anything else.

You are contributing to her horrific lifestyle. You need to cut everything off. There is no other way to save her and yourself.

<comment><USER23> How is he supposed to do so? If they were indeed married and went through a divorce there is likely a court order forcing him to pay for her lifestyle.

<comment><USER24> Yep. In California or New York, it's typically a year of alimony for each 2 years of marriage. At 10 years, it's lifetime. So he definitely dodged a bullet.

But for a few years, he's probably on the hook for half his income since she was stay-at-home with no career.

<comment><USER25> There's still going to be child support for sure but after the kid starts going to school she will be expected to get a job, if able, and if she remarries then generally you won't have to pay alimony anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> These days I use facebook just for its messenger. On my computer, I skip facebook.com and go to messenger.com directly. On mobile (I refuse to install their apps), I go to mbasic.facebook.com because Facebook doesn't let me access the messenger tab in the mobile facebook website, nagging me to install their messenger app.

Messenger is a really useful tool to stay connected. Pretty much everyone I know is available there, so using it is a net positive for me. Can't say the same about the news feed itself.

(I know that the article isn't talking about Facebook in particular, but I just thought this is worth sharing.)

<comment><USER27> Messenger is at least as good as a decent IRC server, with your friends all agreeing to use an IRC client app, instead.

Super weird to see that we're coming full circle; it used to be that you had to install a special app to chat with your friends, same as it ever was today ..

<comment><USER28> > with your friends all agreeing to use an IRC client app

I can't imagine what world you live in where this is a realistic options. I couldn't even persuade my tech friends to do this, let alone my wider friend group who work in different fields.

<comment><USER27> Its basically a no-brainer to set up an IRC app .. if you can install Messenger, you can easily set up a jabber or IRC client. The hard part is sending the URL to your friends so they can just easily join you, but who needs friends like that? ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm sad to say that I think this is the intended result of social media from the corporate/business point of view.

Instead of TV, with its advertisements being broad and un-targeted, people are building their own hell by searching for what they want. Then the machines learn get an idea what they want, and show it to them. Part of the nature of advertising is convincing people they need these things, otherwise they will be "out" (old, poor, unpopular, etc.).

Instead of maybe one ad in an hour (or a day) triggering you, you're bombarded with reminders of what could be, if you could afford it. Of course the promises are unrealistic and easily broken, but I don't think most people have the mental tools to realize that at the time.

There's all this great positive content out there too! Educational videos, science, all that. But it seems the impact of bad things outweighs the good, which just seems to be human nature - we regret things a lot more than we are thankful for what we do not regret. Even if they aren't selling anything to us.

It's true that we're comparing across the world now, and there will be someone better than you. But that's almost always been true, although for a lot of the time you didn't know who was better, or they were simply some distant name written in a book, easily forgotten. For example, I think few will rival Aristotle, but nobody seems to care about that.

Fear and regret are powerful motivators, but dangerous ones as well. If you can't act for some reason (lack of money, lack of opportunity/ability) it just seems to gnaw at you until you snap. I don't think it's any different than TV, except now amplified via personalization.

</comment><comment><USER30> Mayhaps not just Teenagers.

My grandfather has slowly been slipping into a deep depression. Not trying to slap correlations with a causal label, but man oh man how he has started to rely on social media.

To continue being anecdotal: getting rid of my Facebook has (after a few years) greatly helped me feel butter (intentional typo, you betcha).

</comment><comment><USER31> To me, this overall cheapening of life is a problem bigger than social media.

Before recorded music, getting to hear a performance was an event in itself. I can only imagine it was savored. Now, the constant, high-speed bombardment of new music has made our tastes fickle and cheapened the experience. It's not "bad", but it has changed that part of being a person.

We've done it to everything. Food, film, clothing, books, and social interaction. These things we criticize are just specific symptoms of the overall trend, but I can't imagine a scenario where it doesn't happen. It's an unavoidable outcome of our increasing the pace and availability of things. Again, not even sure it's bad, it just feels weird. I don't know how you scale a civilization any other way.

As you get older, it's common to think of yourself as having been born "too late" for something, and I try to be mindful of that tendency. However, it's one thing to lament not being able to be a cowboy, it's another to wistfully look back on life having any manageable pace.

</comment><comment><USER32> Is there any real research that suggests iPhones are the cause? Couldn't it be things that are much more mundane: we just went through an enormous recession, which caused a lot of money problems in families. We're at an unprecedented point in the level of acrimony in politics, which is filtering down into parents' everyday conversations. We're on the precipice of being destroyed by global warming and pretty much all experts agree that today's kids will have a lower standard of living than their parents. Maybe kids are anxious and depressed because they're reading the news (on their iPhones?) and realize how fucked they are?

</comment><comment><USER33> I think a large part of it is due to excessive exposure to life of the rich and successful. Seeing these images through Instagram feels more like a personal interaction than through a magazine, not to mention the frequency.

I have felt this myself having for a period followed the 'it' group in my city. These people were in the best clubs, restaurants, yachts, holiday destinations almost all the time surrounding by beautiful and what appears to be interesting people. Hard not to feel deprived when your monkey mind perceives that as somewhat normal. Despite a very, very small number of people who have this lifestyle, there are enough for this type of life to appear pervasive.

In the past our exposure to this subset of people was extremely limited. Fashion and gossip magazines would do profiles giving a small glimpse into the world. Generally the incredible lives some people have was hidden.

I think it is probably best not to be frequently reminded of a lifestyle that is likely out of your reach. If one thinks not obtaining this lifestyle is a failure (work on this thought if you do!), don't reopen the wound several times a day.

</comment><comment><USER34> The internet has become a world wide soap opera that we are all characters in. ISP's sell a subscription service to minutely episodes of the whole spectrum of human emotion. I also get as much negative and positive feedback as I desire and can take a hit whenever I open my phone.

</comment><comment><USER35> "People only post what they want you to see, so it can seem like their life is better than yours."

Not mention how often these displays of a better person/better life are exaggerations or straightforward lies.

</comment><comment><USER36> So what is it about "Social Media" that's causing this? Article has a passing mention of coveting exotic holidays. (I haven't read the mentioned book.)

So is it (just) comparison? "Everyone else's life is amazing / I'm the only one who's faking it."

What about unhealthy levels of screen usage in general? Do kids who play video games instead of going outside/socializing face-to-face feel the same way (to some extent)?

Maybe media (news/commentary) intake through these services contributes? We all have our echo chambers of ever-spiraling outrage at the Evil of the Other Side -- does this add to feeling powerless, or that the future is hopeless? Certainly aren't being exposed to reasoned debate...

Broader, do our modern technologies now allow more complete, socially acceptable escape from 'real life'? And the further we get from non-virtual interactions with _anything_ the more ill we become?

</comment><comment><USER37> Don't forget the effect modern day food with all the added estrogen in diary, antibiotics given to animals, pesticides, added sugar and palm oils all now in their gut, mix in less sleep and social media and no wonder their moods are screwed. You are what you eat.

</comment><comment><USER38> I find instagram to be, by far, the most damaging to my mental health of all the social networks. The explore feed must be optimized to relentlessly show "all the people I wish I could be but will never be."

<comment><USER39> Are you saying that if you were unaware those people existed, your mental health would benefit?

I don't understand. "Ignorance is bliss" surely can't be an antidote to depression.

<comment><USER38> The point is that it's so easy to fall into the trap of comparing yourself to the artificial lives of professional "influencers" on Instagram who are selling you a lifestyle for their own gain. It isn't so much "ignorance is bliss" so much as realizing the life they sell isn't really real. Even among "non-influencers" everyone is optimizing posts to show the happiest parts of their lives, which is a tiny slice of our reality.

When you're feeling depressed or anxious, being bombarded with a feed of artificially happy people only makes you more depressed or anxious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I think it takes a tiny bit of courage to look around the room, to have thoughts in public, and to have an image of "I'm not constantly busy". There are millions of George Costanzas, who are constantly acting busy in and high demand, not because they don't want more work, but.. well I don't know why. Maybe they actually ARE busy with social media, but I always look at them like they're pretenders.

Being free is better than acting busy.

<comment><USER39> Actually I think in this case the problem is yours.

Imagine if you were actually doing something on your phone, somewhat important or necessary in some way. And you found out the person near you was assuming you were pretending, that you were acting, in other words you are fake. Not very nice of them to assume that is it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Columbine, 9/11, the financial crisis and student debt were all mentioned in this article as possible contributors to teens' depression. What about climate change? The young will bear the brunt of of it, they know it and they can see that "no one" cares enough to do anything substantive about it. This could be a strong dynamic in this depression trend, too.

</comment><comment><USER42> I have always felt that seeing other people's success and happiness is not the cause of this type of behavioral change. I think that social media causes damage in two ways.

First of all, the feed/timeline/wall delivery system of information delivery must have some play in this. On instagram, I follow friends, family, coworkers, artists, creators, meme curators, technical brands, etc. They all deliver very different content, but I'm generally exposed to them in the same feed. So while I scroll through my feed, I do so much context switching that I get attention-motion sickness. I enjoy the post as I scroll though but I don't retain anything. I could scroll through hundreds of posts in just a few minutes, and I'll hardly remember any of what I've seen. It's like an exercise in half paying attention, or an exercise of forgetting. But, we do it every single day, all the time. The information highway has gone from an open platform for sharing to a fast lane of content mixed with brands and ads shooting right through my conscious.

Then, we have the nerve to call it social. Yes, there's a lot to say about the amount of connectivity these platforms have given us. But they've also changed the conversation we have. Sure, when I directly interact with people on these platforms, I'm doing something kinda social. But you know what's not social? Staring at, or talking to a wall. No matter who has wiped their shit on it. I'm no biologist, but I know humans have mirror neurons which fire when interacting with other humans/things. So, we have a mechanism(s) in the body that respond to actual face to face interaction. How does an abstraction of technology interact with those mechanisms? I can only assume that the iPhone does not account for this in their UX meetings.

It is a little silly to me to assume that the staggering rates of depression and suicide come from reflection on the content these kids are seeing on social media. Social media, when used as designed, does not offer the time to reflect.

(I want to say that there are obvious other dangerous aspects of social media that may lend themselves to dangerous behavior as a result of reflection, such as obsession and stalking, bullying, etc)

</comment><comment><USER43> Rather than just e-devices alone, I wonder about the shift in parenting and style of education today. One of the most marked shifts in society today has been the change in direction towards treating everybody as special. Yet children know who the 'smart' kids are, they know who the athletic kids are, they know who the artistic kids are, and so on. How is a kid supposed to feel when he's constantly told he's special, yet he knows he's not particularly great at anything? A wall full of participation trophies isn't going to change that disconnect; unless the child is completely obtuse, it's going to be a reminder of all his failures to ever achieve.

Now enter the internet _on top of this_ and it's a perfect storm. The media loves stories, however fake they may often be, of wunderkind 11 year old creates nuclear reactor in basement during downtime between giving violin solos at Carnegie Hall and solving world hunger. And the image crafting of social media only further adds to all of this.

Most people are not special, and _that is okay._ Even when I was young this sort of treating everybody as special had already started to seep into education. The anecdote of Einstein failing at math in high school was one that came up more than a couple of times. Of course he didn't. His response to that rumor, perhaps started by a misunderstanding of a grade change scale, was a laugh and comment that he never failed in math and statement that before he was fifteen he'd mastered differential and integral calculus. It's similar with efforts to posthumously diagnose him with various sorts of disabilities, or even attributing, in part, his success to his wife who failed to achieve a teaching certification -- unable to pass the mathematics component, she gave up after two attempts.

Ultimately I think we should treat _nobody_ as special. And require people prove it through their own deeds. There should be every possible opportunity for anybody to achieve such merit, but people should not be expected to be special. It's simply unrealistic and, even if it may make us (as in the parents and teachers creating this facade) feel better about ourselves, I don't think it's achieving the intended effect.

</comment><comment><USER44> There is more social isolation, less meaningful relationships, less sex, debt, overwork, medication and a DDoS on your attention via YouTube, Netflix, CNN, foxnews. It's not just social media and not just teens.

</comment><comment><USER45> Comparatives are too easy to draw these days because of social media. Everyone has an image of the most popular/successful person in their face all the time. It's hard not to compare yourself! And when you fall short in comparison, it makes you feel unhappy. Then it makes you feel like you need some moonshot idea to elevate your standards - that puts pressure on you and invariably drives anxiety. I see growing levels of anxiety in the interns I hire - <USER4> ironically, I see them resorting to social media to find solace of some kind!

<comment><USER39> I still don't see how comparing to success causes unhappiness. This theory is too convenient and is spreading like a disease.

When you see someone who is popular and successful, the normal and healthy response is admiration and inspiration. If you fail to have your own wins of some kind, then this could be the source of unhappiness, but that is because you didn't have a win, not because others did.

<comment><USER45> It causes unhappiness because it highlights that you are relatively worse off. And I wasn't talking about comparisons between yourself and some random celebrity, but moreso a comparison between yourself and a person you might have been at college with. If that person is doing exceptionally well, and you're doing just okay, there is a strong chance it will stir up jealously and negativity rather than admiration. This is also the topic of multiple sitcoms, which generally tend to zoom in on relatable facets of human nature ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> As opposed to growing more anxious and depressed due to television watching?

<comment><USER47> Or just about any other media, if you listened to my parents you would think the world is about to end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Wages stagnating, costs of college increasing, and most teenagers are pretty upset about the political climate, but I'm sure it's social media. Sure the markets have improved, but that improvement hasn't really been reflected in wage growth.

</comment><comment><USER49> It very well can be because teenagers are more vulnerable to the flood of shallow and sensationalist information pouring on them from media, amplified by social networks. Even for adults it can be hard to keep positive thinking after watching/reading news nowadays. No wonder teens struggle with it even more.

</comment><comment><USER50> One way to think about some of this stuff is that "the society has changed too much too quickly for our biology to catch up".

</comment><comment><USER51> I believe that social media is a symptom, not the cause, of the great loneliness that our modern aloneness has caused. We are alone much of the time, especially in American suburbia. Even when we are in the city filled with people, these people are just blank faces whom we do not know. We are seeking any form of connection that we can get. And when the only connection to others that we have is through the computer, we become addicted to it.

That said, I believe that once addicted to social media, the bubble of safety that we feel from "eating social junk food". The screen bubble, can become alluring and some people fall into it. I remember at the Prague hackerspace, how we'd all be sitting around the table, and I'd be confused, why people were laughing and interacting without words. It was a while till I realized that they were chatting on IRC.

<comment><USER52> The cause is 30-40 years of a mindless consumption culture. It has given us growth but at a price. The good news is we it seems to be hitting it limits. And that's when things change. For the better.

<comment><USER51> While I hate consumerism, I wonder why you say that it has caused our loneliness. Wouldn't it be possible to buy large numbers of board games, and other social goods while not becoming isolated? It actually seems to me that consumption is for the most part social. I mean, if I spend all day at home on reddit, what do I need to buy besides cereal and soylent powder? But if I'm going out all the time, I'll buy clothing to keep up with the local fashions, I'll buy wine to bring as a gift, ect. Even the constant home improvement, that basement cinema and the pool room, are initially understood as social purchases. "We need this patio so we can have parties." "I'm gona invite all my friends over and we'll play X-Box."

<comment><USER53> Consumerism requires very high prioritisation of one's career (as otherwise you won't be able to afford all the nice stuff), which means working very hard, moving around the country/world for better jobs etc. This must come at the cost of friendships and family bonds.

<comment><USER51> I believe that it is actually unhappiness and loneliness which are the drivers of consumerism and not the other way around. I believe that happy people are lazy and I think that is why western civilization has outstripped the others. I think, that since our social bonds have been destroyed, we work hard to try to seek happiness that the other civilizations already have. And then our civilization spreads, like a disease, infecting other civilizations and making them unhappy and hardworking as well.

I think that this is a relatively new phenomena, which occurred during the urbanization caused by the industrial revolution. Urbanization caused social bonds to be broken, and people became unhappy and hard working.

There is a super creepy tshirt from one startup I know, which has the text "the pyramids were not built by happy people". I've always wanted to ask them about what this means. But I've never had the nerve.

But it has always haunted me.

<comment><USER54> > I believe that happy people are lazy

I'm now reading Marx's "Grundrisse" and at some point, while he has just started explaining the essence of capital, he mentions the story of an English priest who on visiting the island of Jamaica complains that everyone in there is lazy, that they don't want to work more in order to achieve more in life than just obtaining their daily food, and that was the way to disaster. When asked by said English priest on why they were working just enough to put some food on the table the Jamaicans answered him that there's no reason for them to work more than strictly necessary, they're happy with what they have.

Marx's book was written in the 1850s so that I reckon that the English priest's story dates from the early to the mid-1800s, i.e. when the Industrial Revolution was on full throttle in Britain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Governments all over the world will use the agenda "social media is bad, people need to be protected from it" to regulate how we interact with each other over digital media. This will stifle our ability to communicate and organize against laws and government actions that are not right.

Meanwhile school homework gets more and more ridiculous and children get medicated with who knows what kind of psychoactive substances because they cannot deal with it, but no, that's not the cause of teenager mental health problems.

<comment><USER56> > Meanwhile school homework gets more and more ridiculous

Parents need to adjust their expectations, or the kids are caught between a rock and a hard place. The school won't show mercy.

<comment><USER57> > The school won't show mercy.

I guess this is very specific to the US phenomenon explained in the article.

In my German schooling history, cheating the homework was trivial and well established. Everyone got the degree and it was a running gag that grades are inflated. If you fail you can just switch systems and do the degree somewhere else; no hard feelings. If you don't want to switch (because let's say you can't get another school to take you in the area and want to continue to live with your parents) there is a second educational path (zweiter Bildungsweg) which allows you do retry to get the degree.

From my perspective, the pressure I was feeling was entirely self-made and - in retrospective - unnecessary.

Therefore: I would love to see evidence whether or not those findings get approved in other educational systems like in the German speaking countries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Is a TL;DR version for the people on the other side of the paywall?

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://archive.is/jsxCD](http://archive.is/jsxCD)</comment></comment>


A modern alchemical hoax exposed - <AUTHOR> http://www.alchemywebsite.com/alchemical_hoax.html <comment><USER2> The article author is speculating about the motive. Let's see... 3 copies "published", one burnt, two saved, of which one in a library, the other in unknown hands...

The forger might have been selling the "lost copy" of a "rare" book to a private collector...

<comment><USER3> Is it plausible that they could have recreated an old book that would pass muster? I assumed that the "scans" were just elaborate photoshops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The misaligned computer typeface is immediately obvious by the thin perfect lines - quite different to the ideosyncracies of lead cast, press printed type from 1665.

Otherwise a very convincing attempt to establish provenance and an unresolved mystery.

Medieval alchemy's intertwining of chemical process with self-enlightenment makes for a uniquely weird mix of apparatus, chimera and concealed meaning.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep - the computer typeface snuck in there reminded me a bit of Nick Wilding's discovery of a forged Galileo book. There was a two-character chunk of a supposedly letter-press printed word that had _blurred_ in the way things do when you bump a scanner. It turned out it was a forgery created just a decade before, but done with such remarkable expertise that it fooled even the leading Galileo and rare book experts. It's really a fascinating story:

[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/16/a-very-rare- boo...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/16/a-very-rare-book)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I just googled a passage from one of his screenshots of the hoax - "animantium genere non sponte genita membrorum" \- and lo and behold, here's the page that was amateurishly photoshopped: [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LrNjAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA4&lpg=...](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LrNjAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4&dq=%22animantium+genere+non+sponte+genita+membrorum%22&source=bl&ots=68N4r-zguC&sig=8Ln1SRY-B5AwNLutvqmNTMUA1D4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjT6obtr5XKAhUHVxQKHY66AaEQ6AEIJzAC#v=onepage&q=%22animantium%20genere%20non%20sponte%20genita%20membrorum%22&f=false)

</comment><comment><USER6> The text is wider than my screen which makes this unreadable without scrolling from left to right. Fortunately the source code is more readable than the page itself.

Edit: I don't really like it when people are snarky about fonts and colourschemes of otherwise interesting pages, but I figure it's reasonable to complain if it's actually unreadable.

<comment><USER7> I just added this to firefox because of this page.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/reader/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/reader/)

<comment><USER8> Doesn't Firefox have a built in reader mode?

<comment><USER9> It doesn't display the reader icon in the URL bar when I go to the link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oh no! - Someone's been faking my pseudo-science.

EDIT:

I suppose given the history of science, that you could consider alchemy as simply a set of hypotheses that had yet to be proven or disproven. While I think my original comment is funny, the recent news regarding cold fusion shows that I probably shouldn't be quite so closed minded.

<comment><USER11> This isn't about pseudo-science as much as about historical oddities. The hoax in this case isn't alchemy (which is a hoax in a way, or maybe a delusion,) it's the faking of a book.

<comment><USER12> Isn't alchemy the transformation of lead in to gold - that's neither a hoax nor a delusion but instead a performable feat of nuclear physics.

Alchemists (like Boyle) almost certainly weren't working to deceive people nor under a delusion, they were attempting to do something that was not then possible and - in part by their efforts - has now become possible for people [to a degree].

<comment><AUTHOR> Alchemy is better defined as a broad set of practices and beliefs surrounding what we would now call the fields of pharmacy and chemistry. Alchemists didn't just try to transmute lead into gold, they experimented with magnetism, the action of drugs on mind and body, the transmission and treatment of diseases, the chemistry of the body (urine was a very popular alchemical substance), the translation and interpretation of Greek, Roman and Arabic texts, etc. There was also a strong component of Hermetic and occult magical practice, which blurred into Biblical and Talmudic exegesis as well. Boyle's "The Sceptical Chymist" (1661) was really the beginning of the end for that super expansive approach to alchemy but you're right that he was still working in an early modern alchemical framework (as was Newton).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A remarkable investigation! Thank you, it was a pleasure to read.

</comment><comment><USER14> the modern font in the "A R Codex Veritatem" header that the article highlights really does stand out badly. wonder if it was left in as a deliberate tell.</comment>


Why WordPress Themes are Derivative of WordPress - <AUTHOR> http://markjaquith.wordpress.com/2010/07/17/why-wordpress-themes-are-derivative-of-wordpress/ <comment><USER2> Could we please not have anymore "Why Wordpress themes do/don't fall under the GPL" posts from people who aren't lawyers?

It's an interesting topic, but it's been done to death over the past week in both the blogosphere and on HN. Pretty much every point made, or example given, can be debated in many ways. Until someone is doing so infront of a judge or jury, all of them are largely irrelevant and just noise.

That said, if you are a lawyer with experience in cases involving the GPL then post away. I'd love to hear your point of view :)

<comment><USER3> I thought this piece did a good job of summarizing the issues, and an especially good job diving into the technical details of this specific example. Those details are sadly lacking from much of the "noise" being made on the topic - the mixergy interview, for example. This post is signal.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that the technical details it dove into aren't particularly relevant to the underlying copyright question. They show that the user who choses to use a given theme is creating a derivative work, but no one has seriously questioned that. That derivative work is authorized by the copyright holders (GPL allows users to freely mix GPL and non-GPL code on their own systems).

Hence, the important legal question is whether or not the theme, AS DISTRIBUTED, is a derivative work of WordPress. This is a code authoring question, not a code execution flow question. There was little or no insight on that question in the article.

<comment><USER5> That is a really, really interesting question and there is actually some history behind that - the original developers of Clisp had used GNU readline to implement their REPL. Readline was (and still is) GPL, while Clisp was proprietary.

Anyhow RMS wrote to them and complained, so they asked an interesting question: what would happen if they simply had their software download and link Readline when it was installed on the customers computer?

RMS talked with a lawyer, and came to the conclusion that it would properly not be against the law. They made some sort of agreement and Clisp is GPL today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is an opportunity for other blogging platforms to tout that their themes are NOT considered derivative works. And if there are none, then that's an opportunity for someone to create one.

Themes are a major feature to a blogging platform. Stating up front that themes are not derivative of your platform will encourage others to create themes for it.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have a bit of a question on this one. So I distribute a set of files under my license (pick any non-GPL compatible for arguments sake). None of these files have any GPL code, but when installed at the client, they call GPLed APIs. I do not distribute the actual GPL program (WordPress in this case).

I see in the Thesis case why they are in violation (they distributed GPL code), but in the general case, I am really not sure how you run afoul of a distribution-based license when you don't distribute the whole product.

<comment><USER4> If you have not copied GPL code into your files (and copying includes translating, adapting, or otherwise transforming the code before you use it), then your work standing alone is not a derivative work of the GPL work.

When the client combines your work with the GPL work, the resulting work on the client machine is a derivative work of both the GPL work and your work. The client must obey both licenses, if the client's combining and copying isn't excused by some exception to copyright law, such as fair use or the exception that allows copying to RAM to run a program.

If the client's production of this derivative work violates GPL, then it is possible that you could be liable for this infringement, as a contributory infringer.

However, the client's production of the derivative work by combining GPL and non-GPL code does NOT violate GPL. The GPL allows the client to take GPL code and non-GPL code and freely mix and use them for his own use. It is only if he wants to distribute the result that GPL requires that the whole work be distributed under GPL.

This lets you off the hook for contributory infringement--it is simply not possible to be liable for contributory infringement when there is no direct infringement for you to have contributed to.

What if the client DOES try to distribute the combined work? Then the client is a direct infringer. Could you now be on the hook for contributor infringement? I'd say you are still safe, because the bar to contributory infringement is pretty high. There must be no substantial non-infringing use possible with your work. Essentially it must only be useful as part of client infringements. That would not be the case, because your work would be useful in the way you intend--for clients to combine with the GPL work to run on their own systems. That's a non-infringing use, and its substantial.

To be safe, when writing add-on A to work with someone else's program P, I'd recommend the following.

1\. If P is under an open source license and you wish to license A under a compatible open source license, there is not much to worry about. Write A using whatever means are most efficient, including copying code from P. Skip the rest of the items in this list.

2\. If you plan to use a license that is not compatible with P's license, examine P's license to see if there is anything in it that would prohibit P's users from using unapproved add-ons. If there is, you may have to worry about contributory infringement. If that is the case, I'd say give up, unless A will have some use outside of being an add-on for P. Most open source licenses do allow users to do anything they want on their own systems, so if P is under an open source license continue on to item 3.

3\. If you plan to use a license that is not compatible with P's license, do not copy any code from P. Ideally do not even look at any code from P. If you need to call functions in P that are not part of a publicly documented API, get the call information from someone else, and don't get code from them--get them to provide a formal specification of the interface but no sample implementation.

The idea here is that you want to be able to say and prove that you wrote A without looking at P's code or any copyrightable elements of P. If you can maintain that, you can't have produced a derivative work. If you haven't produced a derivative work, you don't need permission from P's copyright owner. If you don't need permission from P's copyright holder, you don't care what P's license says.

Note that this is very similar to the procedure you would use when developing an unauthorized add-on to a commercial program whose developer is hostile to unauthorized add-ons. The only real difference is that the open source program defines unauthorized as "not using the license we like" whereas the commercial developer probably defines it as "didn't pay me big bucks to join my developer program".

<comment><USER8> MDY v. Blizzard is basically the situation you describe.

They were found liable for contributory copyright infringement.

<comment><USER9> _Basically_ , but not exactly, or even all that similar. With the law, it's the little details that matter the most.

The reason most lawyers on HN have refrained from arguing the parent issue is that _it can go both ways_. Copyright law is intentionally ambiguous, and court rulings are all over the place. There's really no knowing how the court will rule until it actually does.

<comment><USER8> I am not ignorant of how laws work. I have spent a lot of time understanding copyright law and in particular copyright licenses.

In my post, I did not even comment on the wordpress issue at hand or even put forth an argument regarding it. I was only commenting on tzs's proposed scenario trying to fill in what I saw as a gap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10>
        To the PHP parser, it is all one and the same. There
        isn't WordPress core code and theme code. There is merely
        the resulting product, which parses as one code entity.

Oh please. This is like saying anything compiled in GCC is automatically GPLed.

<comment><USER11> There is a specific exception to this in the gpl. Actually I'm pretty sure he's even being too lax in his explanation of what gpl requires. If you distribute the theme (or any gpl connected code) you must make the source available, and anyone who gets the theme can also distribute it all they want.

<comment><USER5> It is PHP, you don't have much choice in making the source available :)

But if you meant that any visitor to your site had the right to get the source code, then the answer is no - that is not how how the GPL works, and you would need the AGPL for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The makers of things are the makers of rules.

Wordpress gets to decide what license to use. Wordpress gets to define what is derivative. It's their project they get to do whatever they like.

There is no point in arguing what is derivative or not derivate. The project owner gets to decide that.

Wordpress decided that themes and plugins are derivative. They decided JS, CSS, images/resources, XML-RPC, RSS are NOT derivative.

Them's the rules. Don't like them then pick another platform.

<comment><USER13> "Wordpress gets to define what is derivative."

No. The combination of US law and wp's license decide what is derivative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I agree with this, but here's the question I haven't seen answered. It seems thesis and others want to make their themes non-gpl so they have recourse if someone redistributes it illegally. The question is: "How many people have they ACTUALLY taken recourse against?"

</comment><comment><USER15> _Themes cannot stand by themselves_

Yes, they can. Sorta. It wouldn't be very difficult to extract the design for use elsewhere, especially a static website. Most designers _start_ designing with tools like Photoshop and HTML/CSS, not PHP and Wordpress code.</comment>


"Founders" class stock agreement - <AUTHOR> http://www.founderinstitute.com/information/agreements

<comment><USER2> Has anyone got this to fly?

This looks like it would be a tough one to sell to most of the investors I know.</comment>


Who rules America - <AUTHOR> http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

<comment><USER2> One thing that's missing, particularly in the tax cuts for the rich debate, is the difference in actual tax rates for us middle class and the rich. From my pay check withholding (single) I'm paying about 30%, plus my employer is paying another another 7.6% for SS, plus sales tax and my taxes are pushing north of 35%. The rich on the other hand pay mostly capital gains which maxes out at 15%. Throw in deductions for things like real estate and such and the real tax rate is probably closer to 10%. (Citations and actual figures gratefully accepted)

The rich dont need additional tax breaks. They need to pay tax rates closer to what the rest of us do.

<comment><USER3> It's not their fault you chose to depend on earned income for your livelihood. Judging from your comment, you're obviously aware that they were smart enough to earn their livelihood from portfolio and passive income so instead of punishing them for that, why don't you do the same thing?

<comment><USER4> Obviously, a passive income doesn't just depend on "smarts", it also requires initial assets and cultural capital that are generally inherited from the previous generation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you sort people by wealth (or height, or IQ, or penis length, or any other numerical quantity), and then divide them into the top N% and the bottom 100-N%, the top N% will have more than N%, unless everyone has the same wealth, height, etc..

The wider the range of the distribution, the bigger the concentration will be.

I wonder how much of the wealth distribution disparity is simply a consequence of the fact that we have a wide range (near $0 to many $billions).

</comment><comment><USER6> _...which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80%..._

They're making it sound like the top percentage of wealthy people are hogging the wealth, taking it away from everyone else. What about the possibility that the top 20% had a considerable hand in creating that additional 15% of wealth?

</comment><comment><USER7> True wealth is how long you can maintain your preferred lifestyle without working. While most of us won't become rich [1], we can become wealthier [2]. As Robert Kiyosaki says, most people trade time for money (job) [3]. We are lucky as software entrepreneurs to have the ability to make some money without working (e.g. working for yourself is not scalable but a revenue-generating website can be multiplied - example: <http://rejectiontherapy.com>)

> But it's important to note that for the rich, most of that income does not > come from "working": in 2008, only 19% of the income reported by the 13,480 > individuals or families making over $10 million came from wages and > salaries. See Norris, 2010, for more details.)

[1] <http://www.unschooled.org/2010/11/first-know-thyself/>

[2] "Ask HN: Side Projects Gone Big"

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1772224>

[3] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kiyosaki>

</comment><comment><USER8> People write these findings as if they're surprising. It's not. Take Google, for instance:

-The founders, early hires, and investors made a lot. This is their top 1% accounting for 35% of the wealth

-The rest of the employees made not as much, but still quite a lot. This is the next 19% holding 50%.

Then there's people who didn't have anything to do with building Google, who own none of Google. That's the other 80% of people, who own 15%.

The people who didn't build Google benefit a heck of a lot from the people who did - they have free to a range of amazing quality free services - search, Gmail, Maps, Earth, Apps, Finance, Analytics, Voice, Android, etc, etc, etc. They don't own Google and they're not millionaires. But they're much better off because the Google guys built that amazing company, which is why they're so wealthy.

<comment><USER9> _People write these findings as if they're surprising. It's not._

Before reading this article, did you know that CEO pay has grown twice as fast as the S&P 500, three times as fast as corporate profits, and sixty-nine times as fast as production workers? And that the minimum wage, adjusted for inflation, has not grown at all and has in fact lost ground?

Yes, it's true that good companies make everyone wealthier in absolute terms, but that's not the whole picture either. Not every company is Google.

<comment><USER3> Why should you or I care how fast a company is increasing the pay of their CEO? That's an issue for their shareholders. If I'm not a shareholder I don't care, it's not my money.

<comment><USER9> If I was in the business of selling luxury yachts or real estate in exclusive neighborhoods, I'd definitely prefer a smaller number of wealthier individuals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A small adage: the poor of yesterday are not necessarily the poor of today. Immigrants arriving in the US are usually at the bottom of the ladder. As long as the US receives immigrants, it will have a somewhat bottom-heavy income distribution (more than otherwise).

Also note that while it may be tempting to "soak the rich", they are the most mobile segment of society. Arguably too, they are the most productive private users of capital. (I'd make a distinction here between real private capitalists and bankers/financialists etc)

Finally, technology allows individuals today to be vastly more productive than their potential peers. The differences are much more stark in a high division of labor society. Whereas, if you are a great hunter your productivity could be maybe 2-3 times better than average, a guru programmer can be a few orders of magnitude above the otherwise average skilled professional.

</comment><comment><USER11> People seem to love pointing out income distribution numbers (seemingly to pit people against the wealthy, but maybe I'm wrong). But let's not forget who also pays the taxes:

<http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html>

(top 1% pay 38% of income taxes)

<comment><USER12> So, 42% of the wealth supplies 38% of the tax base? That's pretty close, of course, but when you're talking about trillions of dollars 4% is quite a big shortfall.

<comment><USER11> And it's 4% the other direction if you use the net worth number. He defines wealth as (net worth - home value) so I don't know that it's a good metric

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Leftists are obsessed with money, but just for the record, the media rules America. Money is mainly concerned with protecting and growing itself, not ruling anything as such.

<comment><USER14> _Leftists are obsessed with money_

I believe it's actually the other way around.

<comment><USER15> The right is obsessed with its own money; the left is obsessed with other people's money.

<comment><USER16> The right is obsessed with ensuring that other people don't get the money they inherited, even it is for things like subsidized lunches for poor children.

And the reason I call out "inherited" is I notice a fundamentally different position between people I know who have earned their wealth versus those that have inherited it (even for relatively poor/middle-class people who have inherited their position through things as basic as being white in the US -- which tends to mean you've had generations to accumulate capital that can be transferred).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Adobe's Flash Platform Game Developer Center - <AUTHOR> http://www.adobe.com/devnet/games.html

<comment><USER2> Wow whoever put this together for Adobe knows a lot about the industry, the information looks current _and_ correct.

</comment><comment><USER3> I for one was really hoping that this was going to be more ironic than it actually was...

<comment><USER4> I understand some people have problems with the Flash platform, but at the moment it's the best option for a few large classes of web-based games.</comment></comment>


Ask YC: Where I can learn the basics of a startup. - <AUTHOR>

HN has been shedding light on lot of startup related stuff which are really helpful. But if someone still wants to know about the basics like how to get in to the correct mindset, Howto know whether I'm actually ready to leap etc. it'll be great if the experienced folks here can share some ideas/sources. Care to share? <comment><USER2> Read, network events, and start building something that you care about. "Founders at Work", like anuraggoel suggested, is a good place to start. "The Art of the Start" is another good place.

Focus less on the legal side of things at this stage and more about the entrepreneurial mindset.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for clearing up one point I was worrying about. >Focus less on the legal side of things at this stage and more about the entrepreneurial mindset.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Easiest and best way (imho) is to simply to work for a startup.

<comment><USER4> I completely agree. After working for a startup for over year, I have witnessed behaviors, actions and decisions that create progress as well as the ones that hold it back. You begin to see all of the mantras and advice trickled throughout the web actually applied (or at least attempted).

You see what works for you and what doesn't. You identify your strengths and whether you can handle stress or not. Consider it getting paid to learn about the things that interest you (startups, hacking, marketing, etc).

Other Tips: To get a basic overview of funding strategies, read <http://www.venturehacks.com>. Attend events like <http://sf2.startupweekend.com> and be in a room full of people you can ask questions to (let me know if you would like a discount code for this).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Paul Grahams essays are pretty excellent.

</comment><comment><USER6> As ScottWhigham mentioned, "The Art of the Start" is a great place to start. But if you don't want to wait until you're able to get your hands on the book, you can check out a presentation the author did on it: <http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/06/the_art_of_the_.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot. The video will be very helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Step 1: Read 'Getting Real' - <https://gettingreal.37signals.com>

Step 2: Start with a project that would take less than a week to prototype, and then extend it gradually. Release early, release often. Apply feedback and improve. Evolve it into a startup.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the Helpful comments & a good resource.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Read Founders at Work.

</comment><comment><USER9> Do something (anything) that brings you in $400 a month with no extra work on your part. If you can pull that off, you are in the right mindset.</comment>


Technical-eBooks: PDFs for programming tutorials - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/devharsh/Technical-eBooks <comment><USER2> 1001 Math Problems book. Does not compute. Page 102. Problem 697.

If (x/5 + x/10 = 4) what is x? None of the four proposed answers is correct (4, 20, 40, 80). I get 40/3, which I can confirm by calculator.</comment>


Prince of Persia: Sands of Time free download for Ubisoft's 30th birthday - <AUTHOR> https://30years.ubi.com/ <comment><USER2> Quake 20th anniversary is coming up soon. I'm away on holiday with no PC access. I'm a bit sad I'm going to miss out on the inevitable surge in people on Q1 servers. Anyone here still plays Q1? If you're in the right timezone you can sometimes find a few random chaps on the public servers.

I actually played a couple of months ago and I'm not as good as I remember being, although that might partially be age.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was having trouble loading this page, just saw a white screen, but I was able to get the game by going to Ubisoft Club directly, e.g. [https://club.ubi.com/#!/en-GB/ubi30](https://club.ubi.com/#!/en-GB/ubi30)

</comment><comment><USER4> I love this game. The storytelling is fantastic and the framing device is really clever and unique.

Even though the final boss fight is extremely lackluster the game has maybe the most enjoyable ending I've experienced.

<comment><USER5> No, that's not how it happened ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I loved this game back in the day. Downloading even though I need to sign up, just for the memories.

<comment><USER7> Sands of Time was pretty fun, but it kind of felt too easy (rewinding every mistake). My favorite was the original DOS Prince of Persia, which was one of my favorite games back then!

<comment><USER8> Wasn't there a limit to the number of times you could rewind time and you had to collect some items/defeat enemies to get more rewinds?

<comment><USER9> yep - you don't get infinite rewinding :O

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oh boy.. I forgot just how bad the controls were for this thing.

Hey, you're running and jumping, imma gunna move the camera to give you a panoramic view! Whoops, that just change you to running in the wrong direction so you missed the jump. Silly me!

</comment><comment><USER11> any mirror?

</comment><comment><USER12> Gah UPlay login required.

<comment><USER13> Of course it is... It adds it to your UPlay account. What do you expect, for them to give it away on Steam?

<comment><USER14> I guess putting a DRM-free installer on a website is too lowbrow for them.</comment></comment></comment>


Where do Kickstarter projects find their engineers? - <AUTHOR>

A google search didn't seem to find anything so here's what I'm thinking...
A) does it exist?
B) it could be similar to openbounty, but let people work together on passion projects rather than staying alone.  Postings could be for specific skill sets or interests.  It could remove the burden of doing everything alone for similarly interested people.  And provide projects with a wider array of talents.
C) The community could develop documented workflows for getting projects done in distributed, remote, fashion. <comment><USER2> [http://www.coroflot.com](http://www.coroflot.com) is what you're thinking of. And also [http://www.grabcad.com](http://www.grabcad.com) might be helpful.

</comment><comment><USER3> Build it.</comment>


10 ways to succeed as a freelancer with Zoho Invoice - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.zoho.com/general/10-ways-to-succeed-as-a-freelancer-using-zoho-invoice

<comment><USER2> test</comment>