The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/maxis-is-dead-but-this-game-is-better-than-simcity <comment><USER2> Skylines is hands down my favorite game right now and is directly responsible for my highly unproductive, but fun, weekend. But it's not without faults. For me one of the telling things will be how they handle a very similar problem that EA had with the latest Sim City. Traffic. Once your city becomes a certain size the game goes from City Builder to Traffic Management Simulator. Which itself wouldn't be a problem if not for issues with the simulation.

For example if you have a 6-lane, one-way, road with intersections cars will get into the right/left lanes as soon as they get on the road, even if that's on the other side of the map from where they're turning. Causing the middle lanes to become useless and the others to be backed up (admittedly this isn't totally unrealistic though). I remember Sim City had similar problems and I'm sure it's a tough one to solve. Especially on a big game world with hundreds, or thousands, of intersections and tens of thousands of cars being simulated at once. Even if they don't solve it I'll still be burning my weekends on this game for a long time.

<comment><USER3> There's another city sim in the works called Citybound and the dev is seemingly obsessed with getting roads and traffic right.

[http://blog.cityboundsim.com/](http://blog.cityboundsim.com/)

<comment><USER4> I absolutely _love_ the citybound dev blog, it's such a great exploration of problems that i would never think about otherwise.

However, I have no faith that the game itself will ever be finished. It's the epitome of "perfect is the enemy of good", they spend so much time getting little things absolutely perfect. At least it makes for an interesting blog.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think we are all playing into EA's strategy by calling it Maxis instead of just EA.

Simcity 2013 was a failure of EA, but by mentioning Maxis 11 times and EA only once (and in passing), it's as they give EA a carte blanche to fail without the lowered reputation for future games (which means many people will preorder, and so on)

<comment><USER6> Honestly I think Maxis deserves a ton of blame as well. They operate semi- autonomously for how long and they routinely churned out terrible games. On reddit, I see far more people blame EA than I do Maxis. And while I'm all for EA getting a ton of bad press, I think it's bs that nobody points a finger at Maxis because they're just as guilty, imo. Nostalgia for 90s and early 00s Maxis is blinding people from the reality that Maxis turned into a shit dev

<comment><USER7> This is the classic symptom of changing oneself to fit the mainstream once one hits the mainstream. Whether it's EA's fault of Maxis's fault is just fruitless finger pointing (it's EA's, these guys are literally the cancer that's killing the video game industry), but the real mistake is updating your game to fit "mainstream standards" of connectivity, social, high quality 3d graphics, etc. Some management official or engineer probably sold these ideas as completely required innovations if Simcity wanted to stay competitive with things like facebook or MMOs (i.e. other time-consumers), and everyone just jumped on board.

And it's that very idea of "we need to stay competitive" that really killed Simcity. Here in capitalist societies, we're sold on the idea competition is great, but it's not, it assumes the fact the rules stay the same and focuses attention on what our "enemies" are doing. We become obsessed with not doing what we do best, but with doing what we think will beat the others. In Simcity's case, it was adopting online connectivity and social interaction despite the fact Simcity is inherently a creative game and not a social one (in fact, unless you're a trash-tier mayor, you've spent time researching city layouts, reading through strategies, and possibly even simulating various algorithms and geometries in matlab or whatnot... whereas in a social game, you'd be spending your time name-calling the other players). Strategies and ideas that emerge from competition focus on trying to capture customers from an adversary, and completely ignores the fact people are complicated, don't like change, and that a company can capture them by just being incrementally "better" in some engineering metric.

Today, it's too late for simcity, but to a new rising city game like skylines, I hope they ignore what "the competition" are doing and just focus on making their fun city building game more fun (e.g. instead of worrying about online, social, or the 2018 version of online-social which will probably be 3d holograms or something, spend time introducing new mechanics like strategic resources, "work from home" algorithms, flying cars, racism / gentrification, etc.)

<comment><USER8> I think Simcity came around in the same era where everything EA did was online, for no reason. It's like the execs said 'online social games are killing us, we need all of our games to be online and social' and wouldn't sign off on a project without those two check boxes.

Need for Speed: Rivals was similar. It was a neat concept, but it revolved entirely around online play that was generally just completely terrible. You get dumped in a map with 1-7 other people, and then you drive around aimlessly hoping that you eventually run into them, which you don't. In the meantime, you're listening to every idiot with a Playstation Camera screaming at their moms for another PB&J, or some jackass swearing the entire time because he thinks he's alone in his room, because there's no way to turn off voice chat in the game whatsoever.

Congratulations, your game is both online (but you can't really tell) and social (but it's actually antisocial).

Simcity is the same way. What if you could play online against other people? I mean… _with_ other people. You could build neighbouring towns. Except you're actually building neighbourhoods because realistically sized cities would take too much server resources. And then you can interact with other cities! By buying or selling resources like garbage pickup, recycling, and power.

Except that the servers didn't work, so online only meant offline always. And the social idea was cool, until some jackass dropped into your region and built a zone that was entirely coal power plants and industrial zones, and polluted the whole region. Or built a city with nothing but power plants, provided power to everyone else in the region, then one day bulldozed everything, pulling the rug out from under everyone else and sending their cities into chaos.

I really hope that Cities: Skylines is successful. It already seems like a _far_ more interesting game than any previous Simcity was, and it has a lot more potential as well. I love the idea of being able to ease congestion by 'work from home' incentives, and it would be cool if they (or modders) could implement that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Colossal Order team, in my opinion was very lucky! There were three games - 1\. SimCity 4 with the statistical simulation model, big maps (region-wise) and plenty of features. 2\. SimCity 5 with a pure agent-based simulation model (it had flaws though, especially traffic), but again the series pioneered a new way of creating games in this genre. And, 3\. Cities XL having a HUGE map, few unique features like bus routing, etc and amazing graphics!

All these games had flaws in their respective models but worked well nonetheless. SimCity 5 is a success IMO; for venturing into a much realistic simulation that you could connect with. Though we all love to complain about the map size.

Cities: Skylines had the advantage of picking up the good pieces of each of these games! On the other hand, the last good game was SimCity 4 in 2003, more than a decade! We badly needed Cities: Skylines.

It's also very elating to see the support the team is giving to us! The Map Editor, the Asset Editor, the water dynamics, a mixture of agent and other simulation models (as they call it - "complex"). Though this game has its own share of flaws, they're quite tiny; except for the traffic (which is being fixed)!

<comment><USER10> > 2\. SimCity 5 with a pure agent-based simulation model (it had flaws though, > especially traffic), but again the series pioneered a new way of creating > games in this genre.

It irks me how SimCity 5 is praised for that. The Caesar series had pure agent-based simulations in the 1990s, and _somehow_ had none of the agent routing bugs SimCity 5 had. How can being worse than your competition 20 years ago be considered an accomplishment?

<comment><USER9> Ah but the level of detail and graphics?

I could see the contrusction workers actually working, moving vans with families, kids boarding coming out of the house, boarding the school bus (actually walking/climbing), going to the school, playing on the swings, the sand, the slides, people actually walking in the park, a car actually owned by a sim being parked at work, etc. SC5 is praised for this level of detail in its model.

<comment><USER11> Except that workers did not go to the same job every day, nor did they return to the same house when they were done. No sim has a history; every move was to the first available location that an invisible "seeker" agent found. So, by not having history, more agents had to be used in order to find available locations. Not to mention that water and electricity were basically implemented as "wandering" agents that just randomly walked the grid and "deposited" at every location they passed until depleted. Which, in turn, meant even more agents, because they had to be populous enough that the random walking would ensure visiting the entire grid.

TL;DR: There were a lot of decisions SimCity made that directly increased the number of agents required. This in turn directly impacted the #1 issue about the game: City size.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm probably in the minority here, but for me the biggest appeal of the SimCity series was the aesthetic and music. The music in particular.

I absolutely love what I have seen of Skylines so far, but it seems to be missing the SimCity charm — that urban soundtrack, the way the buildings light up at night, the unique architecture and art style. I'm hoping mods will fill in all these areas.

<comment><USER13> yup, I think you're in the minority here, I can't imagin anyone appreciating simcity for the music.

It had some pretty graphics, for sure, but I think most people view that as fluff.

You should hear me gush about factorio, and it looks like this: [https://www.google.ca/search?q=factorio&tbm=isch&gws_rd=cr,s...](https://www.google.ca/search?q=factorio&tbm=isch&gws_rd=cr,ssl&ei=zaYJVYN1y_SgBI3ugZgD)

edit: ok, apparently not. apparently people really really really care that their games look pretty, color me surprised.

<comment><USER14> I really like the jazz tracks from SimCity 3000 (the ones that play when things are _going well_ ). They tickle my brain in just the right way.

<comment><USER15> They're on Google Play Music! Listened to it this morning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not to mention the fact that it's the first decent city building game that runs on Linux!

<comment><USER13> wait... what?!

HOLY SH*^%

<comment><USER17> Confirming it works fine on ubuntu 14.04. Bought it on steam yesterday, been playing it since.

<comment><USER13> I'm actually having some issues starting games on it. Some kind of permissions issue I think.

[http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?845038-de...](http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?845038-detailed- tech.-Info-New-Game-Button-greyed-out-on-Linux)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I brought Skylines a few days ago and I absolutely love it. Its got amazing detail and it's pretty much everything I hoped a modern sim city would be. I never thought I would find building a traffic system so fun, and the twitter feed it uses to show you your citizens opinions is a fantastic idea as well.

The one downside is it gets a bit boring after you have made your city. On Sim City you could at least trigger some disasters to destroy your city in interesting ways, I find myself missing that feature sometimes.

<comment><USER19> I feel just the opposite. I think they pace the game really well. You are constrained at first, but the early game is pretty easy. Once you get a bit larger traffic becomes a problem and you need to make adjustments quickly.

When you get further along you can create districts and set policies that affect the evolution of your city. I think the late game is way more interesting as there's an endless amount of things you can tweak.

I'm really looking forward to seeing more mods that affect how districts work, I'd love to create a china town or little italy with specialized assets. I think these things are all possible and will make fully realized cities much more fun to tinker with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Cities: Skyline is a great game. It really fills in the gaps that I had from Sim City 5, but it's iterative; it's definitely "picking up the pieces"...

I am hoping that with some future updates this game gets to the point that it replaces the Sim City franchise completely for me, but it's off to a great start.

<comment><USER21> > but it's iterative; it's definitely "picking up the pieces"

Do you mind elaborating?

<comment><USER22> Paradox Interactive also published Crusader Kings 2, which came out in 2012, and its latest free update was Feb. 16. They support their games for a long time.

<comment><USER23> CK2 is made by a totally different developer.

<comment><USER24> Nope, Paradox. They also make Europa Universalis 4, another major time sink.

Edit: You're right, Paradox is only the publisher in this case, not the developer as well.

<comment><USER25> Wikipedia says it's Paradox Development Studio, which is the design studio, where Paradox Interactive is the publisher, and both are under the same parent company. As far as I am aware, the 'clausewitz engine' used by these games isn't available to other developers.

Who are you seeing as the 'not-Paradox' developer for CK2?

<comment><USER24> Cities: Skylines. Wikipedia says it's made by Colossal Order, a Finnish company: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cities:_Skylines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cities:_Skylines)

EU4 and CK2 are made by PDS, part of Paradox Interactive, a Swedish company.

The confusion was because the thread is actually about Cities: Skylines. That's the game that's only distributed by Paradox, not also made by them, and the one I was confused about.

<comment><USER25> Sorry, I misread what the thread was about. Thanks for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's amazing what a small team with a great vision can do. They had the expertise and delivered what customers wanted.

It's also sad how a large company can lose track of what made its previous products so great. EA tried to "innovate" SimCity 5, except they were "innovating" the game for themselves (e.g. get users online to make it easier to buy upgrades), not the end-user. Gamers did not want a multiplayer-based city simulation with limited scale and broken mechanics.

<comment><USER27> _It 's amazing what a small team with a great vision can do._

And even more amazing, for me, is they did it in Unity as well!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't know if it is just my incompetence, but I wanted to mention is that it can be unclear what the citizens want unless you cycle through all the available overlays and check things out.

I feel like they could definitely summarize important counters for you so you don't always have to click 10 times to get all the information on your city. This is especially true early game when your city is expanding by leaps and bounds and you keep hitting electricity/water supply issues.

<comment><USER29> My side project is creating a mod that displays city vitals just like you want. Hopefully I can get it done in the next couple days.

<comment><USER30> That would be great. It is a little annoying having to click around to make changes and click back to check it again after say adjusting your power budget. If it was semi transparent when not in focus and solid when in focus that could be a good way to make non intrusive. anyways I will keep an eye out for it.

<comment><USER29> Here's the mod: [http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=410151...](http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=410151616)

Transparency and minimize/maximize buttons coming in an update tonight.

<comment><USER28> Looks like you are already at 700 subscribers, nice! Thank you for making this, this is exactly what I wanted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This looks awesome! Does anyone know if it plays acceptably on a new Macbook Pro 13"? The spec sheets for the game say it doesn't support Intel integrated graphics, but maybe that means it just can't run full resolution?

<comment><USER32> I've put about 12 hours in on my late 2013 13" mbp. For a decently sized-city (10k+), there aren't noticeable performance issues at full-screen and mostly 'medium' display options. Your fans will get a workout and you get about 30 minutes of battery life off the charger, though.

<comment><USER33> 10k is barely scratching the surface. 50k is where it gets interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Skylines is a great game, with great mod support...

...that retails for $30 (can get it for less on sites like greenmangaming.com). That part blows my mind.

<comment><USER35> Do you think $30 is cheap or expensive? I, for one, think it's exactly the right price.

<comment><USER36> I'd say it's a bit cheap. I'd expect something like this to start out at $50-60 at initial release.

EA is still selling Sim City 4 for $20, despite it being old enough to be in middle school by now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Opensource OpenTTD [1] (based on Transportation Tycoon Deluxe) is still around and in active development it seems. It was a great Simcity replacement in the past for me. Obviously graphics are dated, but gameplay was great.

[1] [https://www.openttd.org/](https://www.openttd.org/)

</comment><comment><USER38> I adore Cities: Skyline, and I haven't even looked at the mod scene at all yet. I was always a fan of SimCity but it's been literally years since I've even played a computer game. Skyline brought me back. :)

<comment><USER2> The mod scene is great so far. Auto-bulldoze and changing the direction of one-way roads are fantastic things to have that I really hope they bring into the game as actual features. From what I've heard they haven't opened up too much of the API to modders yet though but do seem to be receptive to feedback and working with the community.

<comment><USER29> The code is not obfuscated so you can inspect Assembly-CSharp.dll through ILSpy to get a feel for the game logic.

There are no restrictions on what your mod can do - modders just have to figure out how to do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Interesting: My startup (which did something totally unrelated) was called Skylines, and I have been wondering what to do with the Skylines.io domain.. :)

<comment><USER40> Mod community for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I absolutely love this game, been playing this for a week now and cannot get enough of this game. My city is now really big (population of 175k).I have not played the latest city sim games, but have played the old games back in the day (like pharoah , pharoah2 ,sim city4 etc). Its amazing that this runs on Unity, supported to run on Windows, Mac OS AND Linux ! Not to mention its very reasonably priced at $30. Having the ability to start of with unlimted money (one of the mods available at release) makes this game really have a very low barrier to entry. You still have to unlock the unique buildings and monuments however. Speaking of unique buildings, to unlock some of them , you need to intentionally cause damage to your city (like cause 50% unemployment or have avg garbage pile up increase). I found myself trying to have throwaway districts intentionally built to be discarded once the unique building is unlocked. unlimited money after all :) all in all, great game, absolutely recommend this, however be prepared to lose a lot of productivity for a while ! you are warned.

</comment><comment><USER42> This looks like a fantastic game. Two thoughts:

1\. I bet hobbyists could come up with some garden city plans that would be genuinely pleasant places for real people to live, and perhaps city planners might take inspiration from them.

2\. I wonder whether a game like this could produce a file format that could be used as input for a racing game or a game like Grand Theft Auto.

<comment><USER43> Ooh, I used to love flying around my SimCity 2000 cities in SimCopter, good call!

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Another gaming success from Finland. Big up guys!

</comment><comment><USER45> Skylines looks promising, but I'm still reserving judgement. It's a shame that EA completely botched the new Sim City.

I wish EA would port Sim City 4 to Windows 7/8/10\. I would pay good money for that. As it is, I can't get Sim City 4 to work on Windows 7 without frequent freezes and crashes.

<comment><USER46> There is a steam version that at least for me works flawlessly.

<comment><USER47> Even the steam version required hacks for me on Windows 7 and still crashes. Skylines is good enough to replace SC4 for me though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> "I feel so bad about Maxis closing down," Hallikainen said. "The older SimCitys were really the inspiration for us to even consider making a city builder."

That is a brave statement these days. No doubt they have to tread carefully lest someone accuse them of infringing the SimCity IP.

</comment><comment><USER49> I'm WAY out of the loop- but I thought this might have been Civitas coming to fruition... [http://videogamesuncovered.com/what-happened-to-civitas- and-...](http://videogamesuncovered.com/what-happened-to-civitas-and-who-is- their-secret-backer)

</comment><comment><USER50> It'd be nice if we could isolate how much of the failure is linked to the "uninterrupted connection required" approach to DRM for single player games.

</comment><comment><USER51> How big can the city be?

<comment><USER52> 1 million population

<comment><USER47> The population in skylines actually represents the agents. In sim city it wasn't a representation of the agents it was inflated. Sim City's numbers seem more accurate to city size. For example I have a city that would probably be 300-400k people in SimCity/Real life but the reported population is 75k in C:S.</comment></comment></comment>


Titan in Depth: Security in Plaintext - <AUTHOR> https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/titan-in-depth-security-in-plaintext <comment><USER2> This article is from 2017. Take a look at what is happening in open source with OpenTitan. [https://opentitan.org/](https://opentitan.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Any idea where google manufactures the chips? Do they do it themselves in their own fabs?

It's unfortunate that the company best poised to provide the world complete end-to-end privacy and security, is also the one least likely to democratize it.

<comment><USER4> > It's unfortunate that the company best poised to provide the world complete > end-to-end privacy and security, is also the one least likely to democratize > it.

Titan was open-sourced at the end of last year. [0]

> Any idea where google manufactures the chips? Do they do it themselves in > their own fabs?

Whilst Google avoided confirming anything, I believe the actual fabrication was probably done through Cypress Semiconductor, before Skywater Technology Foundry spun out of them. The foundry and Google have a long and ongoing relationship.

[0] [https://security.googleblog.com/2019/11/opentitan-open- sourc...](https://security.googleblog.com/2019/11/opentitan-open-sourcing- transparent.html)

<comment><USER3> Insightful reply! thanks.

Open sourcing a project, in my opinion, is far from spearheading a world of privacy and security.</comment></comment></comment>


Big mistake launching a startup: make users pay for beta - <AUTHOR> http://www.businesshackers.com/2007/07/22/big-mistake-launching-a-startup-make-users-pay-for-beta/

<comment><USER2> Joe Kraus argues that if you are going to charge it's helpful to do it in beta to get feedback on how well you model is going to work.

#6 in [http://www.brendonwilson.com/blog/2006/04/30/joe-kraus- confe...](http://www.brendonwilson.com/blog/2006/04/30/joe-kraus-confessions- of-a-startup-addict/)

</comment><comment><USER3> The powerset demo is at an event - where the money is going on putting on the event. Powerset isn't the only company demoing there. This guy just has the wrong end of the stick.

Any news.yc'ers going to SFbeta on tuesday? - shoot me an email.

</comment><comment><USER4> Fully agree, users are providing the beta with their valuable time, offer an exchange as QA testers.

</comment><comment><USER5> Instead of just not charging beta users, imagine paying them a small thank-you fee ... might be a good way to get early adopters really on your side.

<comment><USER6> Let me know when you do this.

<comment><USER5> Will do. :-) I'm actually hoping to do something like this when microPledge goes live.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple May Have Two iPhones For Verizon - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/iphone/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=217200485&cid=iwhome_art_iPhon_mostpop

<comment><USER2> I don't doubt that Apple will want to get the iPhone onto Verizon's network. However, Verizon itself has said that Apple has no interest in making a non- GSM phone. I'm guessing, as the article postulates, that these negotiations are a way of milking AT&T for more money. Verizon is rolling out an LTE network which Apple will probably provide a device for, but that network won't be finished until 2014 according to the latest reports.

However, these negotiations could get a lot more money out of AT&T who desperately would like to keep the iPhone as an exclusive past 2010.

As for the iPhone losing its "special-ness" when it becomes multi-carrier like the Motorola RAZR, that's a different situation. The RAZR was a basically unchanged phone for years. It was hot when it came out because it was new and different, but other phones became even better than it as Motorola rested on its laurels. Apple has a few advantages here. First, they've shown with their iPod line that they won't be content selling the same, unimproved product when they could be making improvements. Second, one of the most attractive things about the iPhone right now is the App Store.

The App Store has put a huge barrier up against competition. Sure, there are a million-odd Android phones out there, but there are nearly 40M iPhone/iPod touches out there - and, in terms of developer mindset, the iPhone is where it's at. In fact, the iPhone is starting to look like Windows in that developer mindset is firmly behind the iPhone and alternative platforms aren't seeing the cool applications coming out for them. Apple's now in the position where third parties are creating the value of their platform by developing for it. I'm not saying that's a good thing (as someone who will shortly own a Palm Pre), but it does look like I'll be stuck without many of the cool apps.

<comment><USER3> Agree with everything you've said, but there's an interesting bit of news in yesterday's WSJ:

<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124082748427758659.html>

Basically, Verizon added more subscribers than AT&T last quarter, so barrier or not, the iPhone isn't pulling as many people to AT&T as it was earlier. It makes sense from a developer perspective to write for the iPhone but VZW doesn't have to care.

<comment><USER4> The fact that AT&T isn't pulling in as many subscribers does not mean VZW doesn't stand to gain a lot from carrying the iPhone. It can steal existing AT&T subscribers that have iPhones, steal some of the future iPhone owners that would have went to AT&T instead, and also attract people to VZW that want an iPhone but really don't want to be on AT&T.

The kind of growth VZW would see from carrying iPhones should be much bigger than what AT&T is experiencing at the moment, since most of the people that want an iPhone AND are willing to switch to AT&T have already done so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Verizon cripples the OS on their phones so that no content can be downloaded to the phone other than what Verizon sells. In fact Verizon even locks out USB and Bluetooth file transfers from the phones I've tried. I don't see how a company with that kind of business model can be a useful host of the iPhone platform. It'll be interesting to see how they cripple it.

<comment><USER6> I doubt that Apple will let this happen. I have had a couple phones with AT&T and they were crippled too: every single thing links to a store (wallpapers, ringtones, apps...); but they don't have a single thing on the iPhone, not even their logo.

Apple tends to not deliver something if it's not ready for prime-time and I would expect them not to have a phone with Verizon if Verizon insists on adding stuff. Plus, I would think it would increase the chances of people jailbreaking the phones, thus removing a big chunk of revenue from app sales for Apple.

<comment><AUTHOR> If Verizon cripples the device, jailbreaking will provide Apple an opportunity for revenue from app store.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why would Apple create a stripped down 'iPhone lite', as the article suggests? Sounds very un-Appley, and seems to take away the major plus of choosing an iphone (apps).

If it comes to the Verizon network, I'll definitely get one, as long as they don't let Verizon cripple it and screw it up. (I have a lot of faith in Verizon.) It seems that Apple would be in the position of power in negotiations, so I can't see them letting Verizon have their way on anything that makes the iPhone less cool.

<comment><USER8> I think it is most likely a negotiating tactic pr-release vs. at&t. By announcing how they "could" get around the limitations of the current deal and presenting Verizon as a serious suitor, Apple should be able to increase the dollar amount on the renewal of the exclusivity deal when that happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's the rub on why I think this is bunk (but I've been wrong before).

Apple's mobile platform has an app store. Developers sell Apps that run on the iPhone and iPod Touch, which are virtually identical devices (a mere 3 pixels of resolution separate the two).

Introducing more devices fragments their mobile platform, making it more of a pain to develop for.

This is likely a ploy to get concessions from AT&T.

</comment><comment><USER10> If iPhone comes to Verizon, you'll see a ton of people switching from AT&T because their network sucks. I dunno how it is in other areas, but here you'll get dropped calls and lack of signal all the time. Verizon on the other hand is leaps and bounds ahead of them, quality wise. The only bad thing about Verizon is their phones suck, which is something the iPhone will fix.</comment>


Noiszy interview: How a browser plugin masks your digital tracks - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-and-science/technology/noiszy-interview-how-a-browser-plugin-masks-your-digital-tracks/article/491175 <comment><AUTHOR> Noiszy is a browser extension that attempts to mask your online activities with digital "noise," purporting to reduce the value of data harvested online. It came to the forefront of attention at its launch last month, leading to front-page discussion on Hacker News and Reddit. [https://noiszy.com/](https://noiszy.com/) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002995](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002995) [https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/62ld8k/noiszy_a...](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/62ld8k/noiszy_a_browser_plugin_which_generates/)

I caught up with Noiszy's creator to learn more about the app, how it works and why it has been built.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you build up your first career close to age 40? - <AUTHOR> I have under 1 year total lifetime experience with full-time work, which was in 2010. That doesn't just include software engineering work (which is what I have done for the past several years)- that includes every type of job I've done since I started taking jobs while in high school.
I've went back and counted my jobs- at department stores, B2B clients, campus work etc. and I only found one year where I was actually a full-time employee of any kind.
In the meantime I fell into a holding pattern of freelance/temp work with little to show in building my network. Many failed attempts to get hired full-time as a SWE are a cause for concern.
Also, I am about 2 years away from reaching 40.
I'm not quite the same as a spoiled kid who didn't need to work for most of their life. I simply am a guy who has held lot of temporary jobs, but displays little "career intelligence".
What advice would you give to an adult that is a late bloomer in professional stability and growth and wants to build a career? How do people build a network from almost zero in a post-COVID world? I might want to glean experiences of class of 2020 students too, to get an idea of network building in difficult times, since I find myself to have more in common with students than the average 30-something professional. <comment><USER2> My company is fully remote. When I interview people, I don't know how old they are, nor do I care. I look at their job history as it relates to their ability to perform the job for which they are applying. If you were applying for an associate or junior developer position, your lack of experience wouldn't really matter. I would worry that your bouncing around reflects that you can't be counted on to stick it out for more than a year.

To change my mind, during the interview, when I ask, you would need to explain what is different about your approach now. Not just that you want to be different, but what you are doing/thinking differently. If you gave a decent answer and everything else lined up, I would take the chance.

So, my suggestion is look for small start ups. Their hiring practices aren't as rigid.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Hnrobert42, thanks for your advice but I am not certain about limiting my options to small startups. I already attract small startups to a high degree and for better or for worse, they never want to hire me as W2. So I don't get sign-in bonuses, nor a 401K nor health benefits.

What I don't know is what is so different about the approach to getting hired as full-time employee compared to a freelancer that makes it so difficult for me to pass. In what ways should one behave differently at a full-time job interview compared to a contractor's interview.

Right now I'm on YouTube looking for winning tech interviews in order to see how I should speak and things to say. It's the closest you could be to a fly on the wall eavesdropping on an interview. Because when it comes to social cues, I learn better by observing than by intuition.

<comment><USER2> Fair points. I don't know if there are differences in interview responses that would get you placed more frequently as a W2 or 1099. Usually that distinction is already set by the time the company posts the job. So I would confirm early in the interview that the position is full-time and not contract.

It may help to explain to the interviewer why you want a full-time position, from their perspective. That is, emphasize that you want to build something lasting and meaningful. You work best within a team where you all support each other work together. You want to minimize time wasted on spin-up cycles. Practice a 60-second explanation along those lines, so that when they ask "Why are you looking for a full-time position," your answer will be smooth and thoughtful.

My other bit of advice is about self-confidence. I have observed that self- confidence is completely unrelated to competence. That is, there are many confident folks with who are terrible at their jobs and lots of talented people with little self-confidence. So don't get stuck thinking that you could feel confident if you just had xyz experience or skills. You can feel that confidence right now. So while you are youtubeing, consider studying how to improve your self-confidence.

I say all this not really knowing anything about you. I may be totally wrong. I don't many an offense. I only want to help. Best of luck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You can build up a very fine career as a freelance software engineer. My career really took off the moment I quit my job and became a freelancer at age 37.

Of course as a freelancer, working on our network is probably more important than otherwise; you need to be able to find interesting projects, and you need recruiters and hiring managers to be able to find you. I think I've still neglected this aspect a bit too much; I mostly trust recruiters to be able to find my outdated CV on Linkedin, but another freelancer I know makes sure he connects on linkedin with hiring managers of interesting companies. It enables him to get hired more directly, without recruiters getting in the way.

Do polish your CV. Put the focus on the most interesting projects you worked on. Make sure you describe what you worked on, what the broader purpose of the project was, what (interesting) technologies you worked with, and what your responsibilities were.

If you did personal side projects, list them too. Especially open source projects. It's all software experience.

Don't bother listing projects that were both very short and not very interesting, but interesting short ones and boring long ones are still worth mentioning (but the interesting short ones more than the boring long ones: put the focus on the stuff you want to do).

Non-software jobs can still be worth mentioning if they gave you relevant insights or experience, like dealing with customers or other stakeholders, logistic or administrative processes, creative work, etc.

If you look at your work experience from the right perspective, you may find you know a lot more than you thought.

<comment><AUTHOR> As stated before, I find freelancing to be a lonely experience. Not a lot of developers to talk shop to, and rarely do clients follow-up with additional work or referrals.

I finish work for clients as I get paid, and usually never hear from them again.

I've interviewed at larger companies trying to expand my career into being a senior among more developers but they seem to think I don't fit the bill, yet never tell me what I need to do to improve.

Lots of other small startups contacting me all the time trying to convince me to do a lateral move, but what's the point, I will just be the only in-house dev, stuck and stagnant again.

TBH I find freelance career maintenance to be laborious. It's just not right for me. I would rather move into a low maintenance software job rather than the high maintenance world of startups and freelance. It's so easy for me to lose my grip in freelance- I barely make enough money to stay above poverty level (I live in the US so I'm referring to US poverty).

At the very least I want to experience both full-time and freelance to an equal degree. Right now my experience is like 5% full-time and 95% freelance, so trying to shift my time spent on both closer to 50/50.

<comment><USER3> That depends entirely on how you freelance. I join teams. My current project, for a major Dutch bank, started with me developing the prototype, and later interviewing a bunch of people (internal and external) to join the team that I'm still part of.

At other projects, I was hired to add some external expertise to an existing team. But it's mostly long projects in teams.

But before I ended up in these sort of big projects, I went to a lot of local meetups to keep in touch with other freelancers. That can also be a great source of a network, although that never amounted to much for me.

> _" Lots of other small startups contacting me all the time trying to > convince me to do a lateral move, but what's the point, I will just be the > only in-house dev, stuck and stagnant again."_

It can be a great way to prove to the companies you actually want to get hired by, that you can work in a company as part of a team.

<comment><USER4> From the description it sounds more like you are contracting, not freelancing?

A contractor is typically on site, or sells his time (and presence), meaning he has one client at a time.

A freelancer to me works on projects, and will take on multiple clients at the same time.

<comment><AUTHOR> A freelancer is usually an independent contractor, so they're a subset of contractors.

You get a certain kind of freedom with freelancing but it does get tiring to chase people down for your money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One issue that may be getting in the way of you getting full time work is that you come across as being defensive/testy in response to friendly comments here. Here's some examples below of comments that could have softer phrasing (like first acknowledging the commenters point, then refuting it, instead of jumping into refutation):

"Do I need to make that distinction explicit?"

"What good would a code bootcamp do for me which I can't already do self- taught?"

"Just because that is your preferred experience, you want me to follow it? "

<comment><AUTHOR> It's simply good to ask questions to show your interest in how others reason about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You did not follow the typical path and that's fine. Own it. As a hiring manager, I would want to talk to an engineer who had diverse experience and insight into a variety of businesses. Is there a particular engineering area you want to build a career around?

I'm not sure a bootcamp is necessary but I would suggest whatever intensive interview training you think you need to get into a good tech company. Working at a bigger one is a solid way to bootstrap a professional network.

</comment><comment><USER7> What I did is set myself apart by going deep on Ruby. I studied for a couple years. I learned it better than most people. Then I found a company that really needed Ruby expertise. I got my first coding gig a few weeks after my 40th birthday.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm 40-ish and have been self-employed for about 5 years now. I have no plans to go back to full-time employment. You should consider that route.

There are very few benefits to being a full-time employee that you can't obtain yourself. Plus, having a wide portfolio of freelance clients helps insulate you against business downturns and future age discrimination.

Granted, it's a lot of work to curate a good client list and network yourself. But it's actually the same amount of work as jockeying for promotions and good projects at a corporate job.

And there is some risk involved in working for yourself. But at a corporate job there is similar risk; you are always one bad quarter away from being laid off.

Working for yourself IS a career. Consider fortifying your position and staying the course.

<comment><AUTHOR> I find freelancing to be a lonely experience. I don't get to talk shop with co-workers as well.

>I have no plans to go back to full-time employment. You should consider that route.

Just because that is your preferred experience, you want me to follow it? Okay but my personal goal is to be employed full-time and you seem more interested in making me more like you, and not like who I want to be.

If you want to help me on my goal to get employed full-time, I'm all ears. But I am not looking to be convinced to stay freelance.

<comment><USER8> My apologies. You have to be yourself, and there are some social benefits to going to the office. Assuming your freelance work counts as past experience, and that you are trying to stay in the same space, I'd offer these tips:

1\. Tell prospective employers that you were very successfully self-employed, not unemployed. No one want to hire someone who is perceived as inexperienced, so you've got to make it clear that your freelance work was every bit as much "real work" as corporate projects.

2\. Build a portfolio of freelance projects that are impressive. When talking about them, mention how you had to do "full stack" or "end to end" work. Make it clear that you deliver awesome stuff and work independently.

3\. Sometimes getting a job is a "who you know" situation. Gently ask your freelance clients if they are hiring, even if it's temp to perm.

4\. If you lack experience, try to get a "foot in the door" by taking a lower position. For example, if you can't get on the dev team, can you get hired as tier 2 support? It's not ideal, but you might be able to move to the dev team in 6-12 months if you are a good worker. Or you can use that as a stepladder to pivot to a competitor.

I hope this helps. Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You have several years of software development experience. If that's true, you aren't really starting your career now, you're just looking for a more stable position. I think that the distinction is important especially in interviews because without it you might be underselling yourself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do I need to make that distinction explicit? Companies are usually more interested in hearing what the employee can do for them rather than what the employee wants out of their career.

Underselling myself is probably also due to my lack of career intelligence. I don't know how to take responsibility for a career. I don't know how to give it periodic maintenance. I'm always living in the now, looking for my next jobs under pressure. Then I become so focused on tasks at the current job that I don't see the bigger picture (especially since I am just a temp worker).

<comment><USER9> > Do I need to make that distinction explicit?

Yes.

> Companies are usually more interested in hearing what the employee can do > for them rather than what the employee wants out of their career.

That's true and is in line with what I'm suggesting.

My point is that you shouldn't position yourself as "I have no continuous experience, please hire me for my first real job". Instead it should be more like "I'm an experienced software developer, this is the kind of work that I've done and these are the skills that I have".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My $0.02:

When I applied for my first fulltime job the company in question was offering both a contract and fulltime option. I was asked, probably in addition to my history of freelancing, why I was gunning for the fulltime option. I responded by saying that I appreciated the steadiness of work (with freelance you are often looking for the next opportunity), and to help contribute to the success of a particular organisation in the long term. They seemed satisfied by this response. I think they were coming from the point of view that you could make more money by freelancing / contracting, so were just curious as to why I wanted to "downgrade" (not their words, this is just my speculation).

Based on that experience (admittedly I was 23 at the time), you may find prospective employers more open to entertaining your application than you might think due to them having a different perception of your history.

I think given Covid you could make a pretty good case for wanting to shift to a more stable career path. I also wouldn't belittle your own experience thus far as not being a "career". There are many advantages of chopping and changing between different business contexts that you now have, that someone who only ever worked in 2-3 companies would not have.

You say you have no network. I would suggest reflecting a bit more on this, as I'm certain you would at least have some amicable contacts / temporary colleagues that you've made along the way, even if you wouldn't necessarily think of them as your "network" right now. Do you have a LinkedIn profile? If not, consider making one and connecting with some of the people you've worked with in the past.

Popping up a GitHub profile with a simple project that demonstrates what you think your skills are (e.g. perhaps it's a business web application that has a well-written set of unit tests, or applies a particular design pattern in a clear and logical way) could be a good compliment to your CV that employers can use to verify your expertise. If you find yourself relating more to the student crowd, then this is the sort of tack that graduates would take to prove their ability.

</comment><comment><USER11> Here are some random things that are guaranteed to work for landing a well paid IT job.

* get your CCNA and become a junior network engineer.

* Join the military. You can join the US military without living in the US or being a US citizen and achieve citizenship in 3 years instead of 5. If you have a 4 year university degree you can start life as a management intern as a 25A. If not you can be a 25B or if you are more ambitious and not afraid of failure a 17C or 25D.

* Learn JavaScript. When I say learn it I mean actually learn it as in writing original applications, walking the DOM, avoiding frameworks. Most people paid to write JavaScript never actually learn it and they need tremendous help from frameworks, abstractions, tools and other things that slow them down and makes for slow/shitty products. Employers generally realize the incompetence associated with this technology but they have products they need to ship. If you actually learn the technology with confidence companies will hire you just for the potential of solving problems other developers refuse to accept.

</comment><comment><USER12> Hi. Here's what you can do:

\- Start a company and build product for enterprise. The amount you get paid as a company vs. as an individual is not even comparable.

\- Learn to sell more, or hire someone who can, and then learn to sell. Someone who can ask for a price you would never ask without blushing, blinking, sweating. Most engineers I've seen have a problem with sales and you don't know what's valuable for clients. I was in meetings where the client ignored features we spent weeks on, and was amazed by a feature we implemented in a day. One colleague engineer who tagged along was just amazed: "From all the features, they loved _that_?". Sometimes the amount of engineering you spend on something and the value it has to someone are two independent variables.

\- Get an attorney who'll draw your contracts and make sure your company doesn't get abused. Clauses to protect you. To make sure you get compensated for the opportunity cost of an exclusivity contract, and to make it constrained in space, time, and limited to some entities. Obviously never sign something before they read it. The contracts you're handed were probably written by people from a legal department, so it's good to run it through someone cut from the same cloth.

\- Amicable relations. Always deliver. Build a reputation. Repeat customers are a thing. Recommendations are definitely a thing. This can be very profitable.

\- Network. The energy it takes is considerable. To be able to positively pitch your services, build relations, follow up on enquiries, spread good vibes... Build relations, build trust... And sometimes, _sometimes_ , you might have to do a solid to a relation in a large enterprise to get in, but when you get in, you get in. Again, this can be profitable.

\- For hiring, surround yourself with people you can learn from, who can complement you. Your objective is to grow the company.

\- After servicing many customers, you'll learn patterns. You can sell a product many times over.

I'm excited for you. All the best!

</comment><comment><USER13> I think a code bootcamp will def help you

<comment><AUTHOR> What good would a code bootcamp do for me which I can't already do self- taught?</comment></comment>


What are you doing for _why day? (http://whyday.org/) - <AUTHOR>

http://whyday.org/ <comment><USER2> Offtopic, but how can no one know who he is, when there's a picture of him on wikipedia, and there's a video recording of him giving a speech in a conference?

<comment><USER3> It's less that no-one knows who _why is and more that good people everywhere don't bother to try to find out. The community is willing and able to support his preference to remain "anonymous".

I assume with enough Googling around you could figure out his given name, but I've never tried to do it. If you do find out his name or other personal information, please DON'T post it here. This thin veil of anonymity seems to be important to _why, and that's good enough reason for me.

It's kinda like the graffiti artist Banksy. It's not that it is impossible to track him down--he participated in a documentary about him and I think I've heard him interviewed on NPR before--but that those that could readily "out" him are willing to protect his privacy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have been thinking about an Hpricot project, looks like I start on friday!</comment>


A GPT-3 Written Blog Got 26 Thousand Visitors in 2 Weeks - <AUTHOR> https://liamp.substack.com/p/my-gpt-3-blog-got-26-thousand-visitors <comment><USER2> Can't stop laughing over the fact that something interesting like this would've reached HN's top if not for the fact that the article shows HN's selective narrow-mindedness and toxic positivity (disgustingly enough, bordering on the lack of critical thinking).

</comment><comment><USER3> The thread about the post that was written by GPT-3: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23893817](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23893817)</comment>


Oculus VR heads talk about Facebook acquisition - <AUTHOR> http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/25/5547800/facebook-virtual-reality-oculus-interview

<comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr: They did it for more money so they could do bigger things.</comment>


Why isn't this $9 cardboard bike on Kickstarter? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/1670753/this-9-cardboard-bike-can-support-riders-up-to-485lbs

<comment><USER2> I assume because it would be incredibly time consuming and there isn't a factory that is already built to construct the bike the way most factories can machine components for other projects made of metal and plastic.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I would so fund this if it were. Hope this goes smoothly for him.</comment>


WhiteHouse set dangerous precedent refusing clearance of security expert Soltani - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/white-house-sets-dangerous-precedent-after-refusing-security-clearance/ <comment><USER2> He was working with stolen documents. He saw files he wasn't cleared to see. Of course the government wouldn't clear him. He would have been better off to tell them that he did not want to be exposed to any classified material while working. Once you see what classified information is, you know you can work without it. The disadvantages, such as lifetime censorship, and control, outweigh the advantages of a brief government job.

<comment><USER3> <He saw files he wasn't cleared to see. Of course the government wouldn't clear him.>

To me, that makes no sense. Clearing him provides the opportunity to debrief him on what he's already seen, make him disclose any contacts requesting that information, and how to properly handle what he remembers (if anything) and what new information he is exposed to.

This is like refusing to give Sullenberger a pilot's certification because he might find water landings fun and make them a habit.

<comment><USER2> If you "make him disclose any contacts requesting that information," you've waded pretty heavily into the 1st Amendment. Should all journalists be obligated to discuss their past reporting with the government? Should only those journalists whose reporting meets government standards be eligible for a government job? Why not just go all the way and license journalists? Some countries have done so. Then you could take away his license for looking at the Snowden material.</comment></comment></comment>


"Losing Yourself" In A Fictional Character Can Affect Your Real Life - <AUTHOR> http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/exptaking.htm

<comment><USER2> My first reaction to this was "No... Really???" with an obvious ironic tone.

The fact of the matter is, we are a product of our environment and we naturally try to pick up our traits, values, expressions and emotions from everything and everyone around us. But since books pull you in so much, it's easier to become influenced by them than, say, a short movie. I didn't need OSU to tell me this.

However, one critical point here is that the effect is often temporary. I've also noticed that often, where I will have a sudden boost of inspiration and energy after reading a particularly uplifting book, but this only lasts for days or weeks, depending on the book.

And that, my friends, explains why self-help books sell so much.</comment>


Ten Commandments of Startup Success with Reid Hoffman - <AUTHOR> https://tim.blog/2017/06/26/10-commandments-startup-success/ <comment><USER2> 7a. If you take VC money and require network effect, be prepared to turn into that which you loathe. leave your principles at the door.</comment>


China Blocks Web Access to The New York Times After Article - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/world/asia/china-blocks-web-access-to-new-york-times.html <comment><USER2> Well, at least we know the article is telling the truth now.

<comment><USER3> That's a completely illogical conclusion to make. Whether it is true or not, blocking a page does not imply admission of guilt. If the article was complete bullshit, they _still_ would have blocked it.

B (Admission of guilt) -> A (Truth) is not the same as A -> B.

<comment><USER4> It's not iron-clad proof that the contents of the article are truthful.

However, if the contents were _not_ truthful, I think you would also expect the Chinese government to forcefully deny them. There is no mention of a denial in the referenced Times article...at least as of yet.

Therefore, I think the blocking of the Times can be taken as a reasonable indicator that the Chinese government wants to hide embarrassing information.

Is that really such a stretch?

<comment><USER5> The Chinese government is unlikely to deny claims about sensitive personal issues like this. This is especially the case if the public sentiment (both inside and outside of China) is considered. When people expect something to be true, denials can be perceived as lies and they will make things worse (for the parties being accused). The worse part is, more people will know it and more people will believe in the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of the differences between India and China seems to be that in India at least, there's a free 4th estate, and there is no way a Government would be able to block articles like this.

As a matter of fact, through the Right To Information Act, there's an activist who is currently raking up dirt on a whole bunch of politicians serially.

Makes me thankful of the freedoms we enjoy and take for granted!

</comment><comment><USER7> So, combining these two statements, it seems that they blocked both sites 30 minutes _before_ the article was posted in Chinese?

If that's true, it's disappointing the Times didn't do a simultaneous release in anticipation of the block.

" _HONG KONG — The Chinese government swiftly blocked access Friday morning to the English-language and Chinese-language Web sites of The New York Times_ "

" _By 7 a.m. Friday in China, access to both the English- and Chinese-language Web sites of The Times was blocked (...). The Times had posted the article in English at 4:34 p.m. on Thursday in New York (4:34 a.m. Friday in Beijing), and finished posting the article in Chinese three hours later after the translation of final edits to the English-language version._ "

<comment><USER8> > So, combining these two statements, it seems that they blocked both sites 30 > minutes before the article was posted in Chinese?

Their censors probably read the English version and preemptively blocked the Chinese site as well, (correctly) assuming a translation would be posted.

> If that's true, it's disappointing the Times didn't do a simultaneous > release in anticipation of the block.

I'm not sure how helpful that would've been. It would've still given them only a few hours in the early morning before the site was blocked. And posting the Chinese version at the same time probably would've resulted in the block coming faster too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It happens in pockets of the US, too: Jerry Falwell's conservative Liberty University did a very similar thing.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/campus- overload/post/fal...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/campus- overload/post/falwells-liberty-university-blocks-newspaper-web- site/2011/04/13/AFLYNJXD_blog.html)

EDIT: mircocosm was a poor word choice

<comment><USER10> Liberty is a private university, and its students choose to attend knowing full-well its policies. (And it blocks a _lot_ more than WaPo.)

FIRE and the Virginia ACLU both agree with Liberty's right to do so: <http://thefire.org/article/10717.html>

You are, of course, free to criticize LU for its policies.

<comment><USER9> The point is that they used their control over the information available to their "population" to retaliate against and block journalism that revealed information unfavorable to their internal narrative.

I'd say that's the exact same tactic.

<comment><USER11> It's not a good analogy because Liberty is a private, evangelical Christian school whose population is there by choice and China is a secular nation whose population is largely there by birth.

Those who make up Liberty's "population" are students attending by their own volition and are there _specifically_ because they share the same cultural worldview as the institution -whatever its censorship tactics or however similar they may seem to China's.

<comment><USER9> I understand this.

However, in both cases the censorship is an effort to save face with their supporters. China doesn't want its Communist supporters to know how rich their party leaders are (a big no-no in communism), and Liberty doesn't want its conservative students to know that they receive massive amounts of federal money (a big no-no in American right-wing anti-government-spending rhetoric).

Obviously it's a futile effort, but it's obvious that China and Liberty both had the idea of punishing journalists and suppressing information in the same way and for the same fundamental reasons.

Am I completely crazy, or does anybody else see the obvious parallel?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not sure what's worse: People thinking that Chinese nationals do not care, that they are unaware, or perhaps both. Most of the people that I know in China, who are at all, remotely informed about anything knows not to get their news from regular news channels. Particularly anyone skilled enough to setup a Weibo account. Within minutes, most news gets out anyways via Weibo (Chinese Twitter)...

In fact it was two of my Chinese friends who told me about the article this morning....

<comment><USER13> Its hard to make generalizations about 1.2 billion people from 3 or 4 data points. It is even harder if these are educated middle class Chinese in a first-tier city like Beijing or Shanghai. I'm sure this topic was shutdown on Weibo already, and you would have to be in a special circle to understand any code used to talk about the subject.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can someone post a mirror or the content of the article? I'm in China.

<comment><USER15> Dear god, get a VPN. I used strongvpn.com when I lived in China, worked great. There are many others.

<comment><USER16> Agreed. I think the set of people who read HN from China and do not have a VPN account would probably consist of just this one person.

<comment><USER17> I'm on vacation in China right now, and my VPN isn't working in China (somehow...), so I've decided to take break from Facebook/Twitter as long as my Gmail is working - and now apparently from NYT

So thanks for the paste bin!

<comment><USER18> google "goagent", which is free and faster than VPN

<comment><USER17> And now Google is down too... DuckDuckGo to the rescue!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Now I m anxiously waiting for one written for Vietnam. I lived there for a few years and the 2 countries closely resemble each other

</comment><comment><USER20> Looks like its no longer blocked in China... [http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/index.php?siteurl=www.ny...](http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/index.php?siteurl=www.nytimes.com)

<comment><USER21> they didn't block the homepage, they blocked the article page and the section that linked to it.

<comment><USER20> Not reflected in the title, and doesn't seem to be in the beginning of the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> China blocked Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation's sites two years ago when the Nobel commitee awarded Liu Xiaobo the peace prize.

</comment><comment><USER23> Honestly, I didn't really see much wrongdoing on part of the leadership, namely Wen Jiabao, as described in the article. Its mostly relatives taking advantage of political connections. Its a broken system, where the state is too closely intertwined with business. Hopefully the rumors are true and the new ruling coalition will make some progress in liberalizing the economy modeling it after Singapore's.

</comment><comment><USER24> I was reading that article last night thinking... this is gonna get blocked.

</comment><comment><USER25> So it has been, so it always will be. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

</comment><comment><USER26> The Times should not just only be blocked in China. Serious.

</comment><comment><USER27> Loving the racist comments on HN these days.

</comment><comment><USER28> I just want to say ... 呵呵

</comment><comment><USER15> The truly sad part of this is most Chinese people wouldn't really mind the site being blocked because of this, nor even be all that surprised to learn what the article said. They don't get offended and angered by their government hiding things from them or abusing their power in the same way people in Western countries do, nor do they have a strong desire to learn the truth. They just accept this as the way things are.

Yes, there are exceptions, but those who feel different are in the minority.

<comment><USER29> An influential Dutch researcher in cultural economics identified, in 1981, a cultural dimension he terms "power distance", defined as "the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organisations within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally".

On PDI, scaled zero to one hundred, the U.S. scores 40 and China scores 80 (Russia scores 93).

Another dimension of significance is individualism, defined as "the degree of interdependence a society maintains among its members".

On IDV the U.S. scores 91 and China 20 (Russia scores 39).

China (and Russia) value social cohesion along implicitly informative, i.e. highly contextual, information flows. Leaders are given tremendous leeway to do their jobs and are to be questioned only in cases of extreme breach of obligation, i.e. when they threaten social harmony.

Note that Russians, in surveys, explicitly prefer social stability to free speech and a free media. Chinese find the legalistic contortions American politicians have to go through to do something generally favoured as awkward and wasteful. We see allowing elites to enrich themselves off market reforms to help them buy into the idea of change as distasteful whereas from a social utilitarian perspective it's strategically kosher.

<comment><USER30> Latest PDI and IDV figures: [http://www.clearlycultural.com/geert-hofstede- cultural-dimen...](http://www.clearlycultural.com/geert-hofstede-cultural- dimensions/power-distance-index/)

<comment><USER29> The full data are available on Hofstede's site, too

<http://geert-hofstede.com/countries.html>

<comment><USER31> The differences between Japan and China are truly interesting.

<comment><USER32> The only thing surprising to me is that Japan's number is not much higher. Their political apathy is astonishing; in my opinion there is no functioning democracy in Japan.

Call me jaded but I am surprised to see the numbers so low for a lot of countries. Perhaps the questions asked how things should be, rather than how things actually are.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Reverse authentication for banking - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jgc.org/2012/05/reverse-authentication-for-banking.html

<comment><USER2> I wonder if any scammers would spend the resources banking on the 1/1000 chance of guessing the three numbers correctly.

If you call a thousand people, odds are that you'll be able to convince one of them you're from the bank. At that point, what are the odds of engineering them into giving you money?

<comment><USER3> If the number of digits is the only thing insecure about this system, it sounds pretty easy to harden by adding a few extra digits (or letters).

<comment><USER2> Sure, but that means manufacturing new dongles and mailing them out to everyone. It would be a significant up-front cost.</comment></comment></comment>


Rewriting Returning in Rails - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/blob/master/2009-08-29/returning.md#readme

<comment><USER2> I personally find the #returning method very ugly. It's an abstraction that seems completely unnecessary to me. Instead of assigning a variable and then returning the value, two very fundamental mechanisms in the language that are easily understood by any programmer (whether they know Ruby or not), you're bypassing them and introducing this method whose purpose I don't feel is immediately obvious.

It would be one thing if the pattern saved a lot of unnecessary code, but it doesn't. The assignment of the local variable just becomes the block variable, and you have an 'end' where the method-final return would be. Instead of a simple assignment, you now have the method invocation and the arguably more complicated block syntax.

I'll address the two particular motivations raised by the author specifically because I don't agree with either of them. First, I don't think forgetting to return the variable is a common bug. Anecdotally, I can't ever remember making this mistake myself. Even if I were to, it would be immediately obvious what the problem is. I'm open to the fact that other people perhaps make this mistake, but I'd be surprised if they routinely do. Second, I don't feel like it's obvious at all what the return value of the method is up-front, because the method invocation is confusing if you don't know what it does. Even if you do, it doesn't gain you anything you don't get by simply initializing a local at the start of the method, especially if you call the local return_value or something self-descriptive like that.

This kind of refactoring is the kind that I don't like — refactoring for the sake of refactoring, and making the code less accessible (that is, more complicated and harder to understand) for no discernible benefit.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure if you are arguing with me or with Rails. Rails includes the #returning method. If you don't like using it you are entitled to your opinion. I won't argue with you, because that is not what this post is really about.

I encountered bugs like forgetting to return the intialized object from a method as well as assigning to the parameter of a return invocation a number of times when working with a large Rails code base. But if you have never encountered it, you need never use #returning in any of its forms.

So really, I'm not arguing with you. Different people, different experiences, different approaches to code. I like #returning, I like #let, I like a lot of things that impose block structure on code. Others do things differently with my blessing.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I know I don't have to use it. I just think the style it introduces is more abstruse overall than the problem it's solving. To answer your question, I'm mostly arguing with Rails, not you. Obviously, if it's useful to people they'll use it and who am I to declare by fiat that something's not useful to somebody else? But just because some level of personal preference is involved doesn't mean we can't try to talk about something on the basis of its objective merits.

But I'm often (usually?) wrong — I was just putting in my two cents for the sake of discussion =)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well then, if you want to talk, I'd say this... (elided).

No, scratch that, instead I'll say this: I don't buy the argument that #returning, or SymbolToProc, or any of the other myriad (and often irritating) little idiomatic extensions to Ruby make code less complicated and more difficult to read.

It's an old, old argument and tiresome to rehash, but ultimately it's a mistake to make things easier to read for someone who doesn't know the idioms at the expense of making things easier to read for somone who does know the idioms.

If you feel the idiom doesn't add value, that's one thing. But I have trouble with the idea that #returning is harder to read. I personally find it easier to read because it is so obvious what is going on.

<comment><USER2> Isn't it implied and understood that I can only speak for myself and from my own perspective? I think my post was littered liberally enough with words like 'personally' and 'I feel' that it's understood I'm not trying to speak in absolutes. So, would you rather I didn't raise any questions about the relative merits of the code simply because there may be people who find it useful? I'm certainly not arguing that no one will find it useful, I'm simply saying that I don't like it and giving the reasons why I think so. If you didn't want people to discuss the relative merits of the code, why did you post it?

EDIT: Ah, you elided what the above is a rebuttal of, which is good because that brings the discussion back to the actual code in question.

There are a ton of little idiomatic extensions to Ruby that are immensely useful, SymbolToProc being a very good example. The presence of so many of them is one of the great things about Rails. So, I'm not arguing against such things as a whole, as you imply I am. I'm simply saying that #returning in particular is one that I have problems with.

Nor am I saying that making things less readable for the uninitiated is a sufficient motivation to bar use of such things. However, this particular idiom gives you so little that I feel what you gain from it does not outweigh the cost of introducing it. So, I do feel that the idiom doesn't add any value, and for that reason there is a cost associated with its use.

It doesn't save you any code, and it's more complicated than the code it replaces, which is why I am puzzled that you find it easier to understand. It makes things wordier with a block invocation when a simple assignment will suffice. Ostensibly, assignment is a much 'lower level' mechanism than invoking a method with a block.

I readily admit, though, that if you find it easier to read then there's no argument I can make, because it works for you. Similarly, though, I can state that it is not easier to read for me. So, I guess we just have to agree to disagree on the basis that our brains work differently =)

<comment><AUTHOR> > I think my post was littered liberally enough with words like 'personally' > and 'I feel' that it's understood I'm not trying to speak in absolutes.

It was understood right up to the words "no discernable benefit" that closed the original comment :-) But any ways, of course I expect lively discussion about the post, just as you must expect responses to your comment.

So to get back to the actual subject of the #returning idiom... I think your comments apply to a lot of Ruby idioms as distinguished from abstractions. For example, is `customers.map(&:name)` a win over `customers.map { |c| c.name }`? Is `customers.first.try(&:name)` a win over `customers.first && customers.first.name`? Brevity alone is not enough reason to prefer these idioms, IMO. You have to buy that they express the intention more clearly, making them more readable, not less readable in your eyes.

Some people just don't see such idioms as making the code more precise, more communicative. If you're in that camp with respect to #returning, you are not alone by a long shot.

<comment><USER2> OK, I think we're on the same page regarding our meta-discussion =)

Yes, I absolutely find

      customers.map(&:name)

a win over

      customers.map { |c| c.name }

My reasoning is that the former is less code overall, is fundamentally 'simpler' (passing a parameter to a method rather than calling with a block), and the code it replaces has redundancy (the block parameter is there only to be immediately referenced for the sole purpose of getting at one of the object's attributes). With #try, there's similarly less code overall and it removes redundancy.

I agree that brevity alone is not enough to prefer one idiom over another. Expressiveness is a big part. I like these idioms, so I'm actually in the camp that they _do_ make the code more precise and communicative.

In my book, though, #returning is simply an exception. A simple assignment and return are already so fundamentally expressive on their own, that — to me — replacing them with a method invocation and block doesn't get you more expressiveness, and instead it actually makes things less readable.

To me, it would be like writing an abstraction layer to replace the use of variables in the language, where you have to invoke a special-purpose lookup table class to set and retrieve values. Why would you prefer

      Variable.set(:foo, 'bar')
      puts(Variable.get(:foo))

over

      foo = 'bar'
      puts(foo)

Why not just use variables?

<comment><AUTHOR> Funny you mention that. If you had your own implementation of variables, you could probably override the behaviour of parameters in the #returning method to get the behavior in the OP without rewriting code.

Naturally the syntax looks a little ugly to the ALGOL-shaped eye, but imagine such a thing written _into the language_. It would be trivial to permit the ALOGOL-like syntax in the code but also allow you to override the #get and #set methods when you want to.

IIRC, this is exactly what Generalized Variables are in Common Lisp. Variables where you override the meaning of setting and getting their value.

Ruby sorta kinda allows this in a very limited case. While you cannot override the meaning of:

        foo = "foo"

You _can_ create setter method such as:

        class MyStack

          # ...

          def top
            @array[-1]
          end

          def top=(value)
            @array[-1] = value
          end

        end

Thus, stack.top and stack.top = "foo" can do whatever you want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It is very difficult to read this method.

The more standard way goes from top to bottom. The lambda method requires the reader to go to the bottom of the statement, then to the top and downward. It requires the writer to remember the idiom and it's a barrier to newer developers.

I also don't see the win in doing this either. Sure, somebody can forget to set the return value, but you can also screw up with the other idiom. That part seems like a wash to me.

* edit - Grammatical corrections and reformatting.

<comment><AUTHOR> I should explain a little more. You never actually _see_ the lambda method, the RewriteRails plugin works a little like Lisp's macros. You write:

        returning [1] do |numbers|
          numbers << 2
          numbers += [3]
        end

And that's all you see in your source code. RewriteRails rewrites that into:

        lambda do |numbers|
          numbers << 2
          numbers += [3]
          numbers
        end.call([1])

And that's what the ruby interpreter sees. But you need never look at the "ugly" rewritten version, just what you wrote.

<comment><USER3> I can see that as an improvement. Thanks for the follow up.</comment></comment></comment>


Probable discovery of a fifth force of the nature - <AUTHOR> http://www.popsci.com/fifth-force-could-be-at-work-in-cosmos <comment><USER2> Interesting but needs retitle.

<comment><AUTHOR> Feel free to suggest a better title. :)</comment></comment>


John Forbes Nash, Jr - Kornar Experiments - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kornar.com/?p=28 <comment><USER2> I think the book a beautiful mind is a more accurate depiction of nash's life rather then the movie

<comment><AUTHOR> thats common with most movies they have add a certain ficiton to it for entertainment puposes like i.e the social network im sure the real truth about mark zucherberg wasn't conveyed properly!!</comment></comment>


The Ultimate Theoretical CS Cheat Sheet - <AUTHOR> http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/cheat.pdf

<comment><USER2> There's a lot on it, nicely done, but really not very much theoretical computer science. Two or three pages of discrete mathematics (I suppose I should say "concrete", since much of it clearly comes from GKP), a page of trigonometry (!), about 2.5 pages of integrals and derivatives, another page or so of Taylor series expansions. A bit of graph theory, a bit of number theory, a bit of probability, a tiny fragment of geometry. Nothing at all on complexity classes, computability, logic, automata, type theory, denotational semantics, or any of the other stuff you might think of when you see "theoretical CS".

(For the avoidance of doubt: The only thing I'm complaining about is the title. Which comes straight from the original document, except for the word "ultimate".)

</comment><comment><USER3> I find the inclusion of Escher's Knot a bit... whimsical.</comment>


What Glass Ceiling? Killer Career Advice From Women - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1822755/shattering-the-glass-ceiling-leadership-lessons-for-successful-women <comment><USER2> Good advice for anyone, male or female.</comment>