Mark Zuckerberg Refuses to Admit How Facebook Works - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2018-04-12/mark-zuckerberg-refuses-to-admit-how-facebook-works <comment><USER3> """ Zuckerberg reluctantly acknowledged that Facebook gathers information on people who aren't signed up for Facebook for what he said were "security purposes." """

That's a pretty disingenuous way to phrase Zuckerberg's response to a question of whether Facebook uses cookie tracking for logged-out users. Which of course it does, and it's of course used for security purposes; one has to be able to unify sessions from people with multiple accounts to do the most basic of bad- actor tracking against the most basic of attack scenarios.

<comment><USER4> This isn't just basic cookie tracking. They have an actual profile on you, without your consent, with the people who have you in their address book and even potentially your purchasing habits, from the data they purchase from data brokers like Datalogix. They maintain this profile on you separately from other users, and they make immediate use of it if you create an account.

That's why it's called a shadow profile.

<comment><USER3> How does such a practice differ morally from consumer credit reporting agencies?

<comment><USER5> It doesn't really - we need to get to a point where all of these surveillance companies are out of business.

Using data about a user with their consent seems perfectly fine. The fiction where this consent can be granted in perpetuity is not.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, as long as consumers can't be uniformly and universally trusted, there's but a market and a compelling, morally-acceptable use case for consumer tracking and reporting in that regard. So if what Facebook doesn't differ from consumer reporting in some other way, I don't see a compelling argument to toss it for the same reason I don't see a compelling argument to toss, say, return fraud tracking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is that so surprising? You're asking him to talk about the one thing that makes Facebook a viable revenue generator. I also feel like the use of "admit" in the headline is disingenuous.

I have zero expertise in this field but my intuition is that Facebook runs on an incredibly sensitive business model. Like an animal specialised to a specific biome. Adjust the conditions a bit and it might perish in a few generations. Meaningful legislative change to data collection or advertising laws might out them at risk.

<comment><USER7> > I also feel like the use of "admit" in the headline is disingenuous.

Yet you seem to be saying that Zuckerberg is trying to hide his business model to protect it from legislators. Doesn't that make the word "admit" appropriate? What other word would you use for something someone doesn't want to say during a hearing?

<comment><USER6> Admit implies wrongdoing. I'm not. I think it can be perfectly fair to want to be guarded about your secret sauce if that's what you believe it to be.

<comment><USER7> Admit doesn't imply wrongdoing, except insofar as hiding the truth is wrongdoing. The phrase "admit you like him" is in common enough use to have 101,000 results in a Google search, similar to "admit you were wrong" or "admit you did it". Having a crush isn't wrongdoing.

If admit is the wrong word to use here, what do you think the right word should be?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the biggest thing is the HUGE disconnect with what people _think_ Facebook is doing, and what Facebook is _actually_ doing.

I think the whole point of this is to raise awareness about of the scope of Facebook's data collection-- It's unfathomably enormous.

If more average people had a better understanding of what Facebook was tracking, they'd be outraged. Zuckerberg's goal in this was to keep the wool pulled over their eyes. That's why he kept conflating post-visibility settings with privacy / tracking settings.

<comment><USER9> And what's worse is that privacy controls explicitly don't control ad targeting. Years ago I had a long term relationship end. We hid our relationship status and only ended the status a year later. Immediately after changing a status marked "only me" in privacy settings I got bombarded with dating ads. I complained that this was a huge privacy violation and they said "we didn't share your relationship status with them. We matched you to them because of the relationship status"

<comment><USER10> > "we didn't share your relationship status with them. We matched you to them > because of the relationship status"

Which I'm sure is acurate, that's how advertising targeting normally works.

Some years ago I read an essay about how the words we have limit the kind of phenomena we think about. I think the example at the time was about piracy and "stealing". Before computers existed it was impossible to make exact copies of something at zero cost. Therefore, stealing was morally wrong because if you take one of something, the person you took it from will have one less of that something. With computers the situation is less obvious. If you make a copy of something (say a movie) A) you're not really taking one copy of a movie from them; instead you created a copy of a movie for yourself, B) it's not clear that you're damaging their revenues either, as not all people who make copies of movies would've bought the movies in the absense of the possibility of making copies. Probably a more acurate picture is something in the middle, but the point here was that anti-piracy lobbies knowingly conflated "making copies" with "stealing". We entered the computer era without a morally charged word to describe an activity that used to be impossible, and instead they used one that misrepresents the new situation of things.

I think when it comes to privacy we're in a similar situation. Pre-computers, "privacy" meant that (phrase A) "people won't know attributes of you", and that is absolutely equivalent to (phrase B) "people (in this case advertisers) aren't able to take actions that depend on attributes of you". Post-computers the two phrases are not equivalent: Facebook didn't tell advertisers attributes of you, but it gave them the possibility to make decisions which depend on attributes of you. Conveniently, Facebook understands privacy to mean the former. I suspect the reason for why Facebook got away with it for so long is that we don't have two words that differenciate between the two phrases. We need to once and for all decide if we want the word "privacy" to mean phrase A, phrase B, or phrase A AND phrase B.

To be absolutely clear, I'm not saying "advertisers can only target you, they aren't being given your data, and therefore all is good". The _only_ thing I'm saying is that the word "privacy" is lacking in a post-computers world.

<comment><USER11> > "Before computers existed it was impossible to make exact copies of > something at zero cost. Therefore, stealing was morally wrong because if you > take one of something, the person you took it from will have one less of > that something."

I know this wasn't your main point, but I think it's worth rethinking the basis of your (or possibly, just this essay's) view on copyright.

A "copyright" is so named because it is precisely the right to prevent other people from making _copies_. When it originated (in the 1700s), its goal was to prevent the copying of books, even though copying--then and now--did not deprive the owner of their own access to the work.

What has changed is not the invention of a new fundamental concept (making a thing like another thing), but the ease with which this can be done by the unscrupulous. If you really liked a poem in 1720, wanted to be able to read it, but didn't want to buy a copy, you could get it by copying it word-for- word from someone else's version. The effect on the author was no different from copying a friend's MP3 file. The only difference is it feels like "a smaller act," so it can't be "a big deal."

<comment><USER10> Ok, so it's not that we went from non-zero cost to zero cost, but instead that cost of copy is a continuum and the lower we went the more prevalent it became.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think the questions were also horrible. Watching two days of testimony it seemed only Congresswoman Dingell from Michigan had any grasp of how tracking technology works.

My big takeaway is that we need more engineers in congress.

<comment><USER13> One of my biggest issues with the current political system is that - with few exceptions - only lawyers go into politics.

This means that you have people who have never taken Econ 101 setting fiscal policy, who don't understand technology trying to regulate tech companies, etc.

I'm not sure what the solution here is, but I think we're asking for trouble when our elected representatives lack a basic comprehension of the domains in which they legislate.

<comment><USER14> >We've arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science and technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. Who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don't know anything about it?

Carl Sagan

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's how Zuckerberg's testimony works:

1\. When he says he doesn't know, he actually knows.

2\. When he says he knows, and that the answer is "more AI," he doesn't actually know.

<comment><USER3> > When he says he doesn't know, he actually knows

I don't think we have reason to believe the CEO is deeply familiar with all the strategies FB uses for session unification and user tracking. It's a fast- moving field with a lot of technical detail that a CEO doesn't actually need to keep day-to-day tabs on.

<comment><USER15> Except this CEO has an engineering/development background, and I'd expect him to be deeply familiar with the criticisms on his company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does he just have some cognitive dissonance, is he covering up, or does he really not understand how his business operates?

 _I used to say to our audiences: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"_

-Upton Sinclair

<comment><USER17> It would seem pretty nigh-on inconceivable that someone could build a business as successful as Facebook in hoovering up ad budgets, but to have no idea how they did it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> >Make the most of every campaign with these four strategies. Unlike display ads which target people based on cookies, Facebook lets you define and reach the exact target audience you want. You'll get the right eyes on your ads, while maximizing your time, budget and growth potential.

Zuckerberg is going to lose his shit when he sees what his Digital Ads team has done behind his back. Facebook is brazen about being a grossly invasive advertising company, just not when they're talking to their users. [1]

[1] [https://www.facebook.com/business/a/performance-marketing- st...](https://www.facebook.com/business/a/performance-marketing-strategies)

<comment><USER18> "behind his back"

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > Zuckerberg claimed not to know what "shadow profiles" are

Did he really claim outright to not know what they are? Anyone have that quote from the testimony?

<comment><USER20> I do recall hearing live that he said he wasn't familiar with the term "shadow profiles." This may have been honest, I hadn't heard it before this hearing either, but then again I'm not the CEO of Facebook, so his answer is certainly troubling

<comment><USER9> Given that employees are told they can no longer use the word "shadow profile" to describe them, I suspect he knew what they meant.

<comment><USER21> > Given that employees are told they can no longer use the word "shadow > profile"

What's the source of this information?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is lying in front of congress a crime?

If I was a senator, I would have asked these two questions:

When I look at a product in an onlineshop like Amazon, afterwards I see adverts for this product on Facebook. How does this work?

When I visit a physical store, afterwards I see adverts for this store on Facebook. Even on my desktop computer. Even though I don't have any facebook apps on my phone. How does this work?

If he lies and says he don't know, from then on he would be at the mercy of many employees at FB whith whom he has talked about this type of data collection and sharing.

<comment><USER23> 1\. Since Amazon uses Facebook for advertising, they can feed their data to both Google and Facebook ads. It's easy to do with cookies.

2\. If you don't have Facebook app on your phone or if you did not open your Facebook app when you are in store, you won't see ads for that store. Unless you have a loyalty program with the store or the store decides to target advertise you based on your payment info, etc. In any case, it is the physical store that shares those information.

<comment><USER22> 1: How is that easy? If I had a cookie on Amazons domain, how would that enable Amazon to show me personalized ads on FB? I don't keep cookies though. So the targeting must use other types of user identification.

2: I don't have a FB app nor do I use FB on my phone. But I see ads related to the places I went to. So the flow of information must be via other channels. One part is probably Google (I use Android).

<comment><USER24> They can also use Local Storage if necessary. I know quite a few Ad tech companies were using local storage to get around no 3rd party cookies in Safari.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Even Zuckerberg doesn't seem to know, he appears to have lost control of what's going on. Unfortunately, the hearing didn't dive into details to better demonstrate that he can't tell why somebody sees what they see, and who uses the data (inside and outside of Facebook). Also, the whole collecting data "for security purposes" is pretty unbelievable. Does that mean they share information with governments around the world? This can be interpreted as anything.

<comment><USER26> Well.. He did look uneasy when asked about Palantir.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Zuckerburg is in the unenviable position of having to defend the entire ad- tech industry.

If he describes in granular detail how user profiling and ad serving works on Facebook, then Facebook is going to take the hit on practices that are basically industry standards. If he obfuscates, and focuses on FB controls then he seems like a liar.

If he explained how ad-tech works across the internet then it would look like whataboutism and him invoking the bandwagon fallacy.

At the end of the day it seems like someone/some company is eventually going to take the fall for the whole ad-tech industry and cause major reform - <USER2> Facebook the one who's going to take the arrow?

<comment><USER18> Good. The whole ad-tech "industry" should be burned to the ground; the sooner the better.

<comment><USER24> The internet will be very different if the whole ad tech industry disappears. It will be driven largely by subscription, but I believe that is the model that Apple is encouraging.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Facebook has to infer intent, unlike, say Google Search, which can get it directly from your keywords. FB has built a data halo around its users to try and infer that intent. Hard to imagine them ever giving you control over that additional data they collect around you, since it's their competitive advantage. But also proving to be a double edged sword because it's creeping out their users and other actors are starting to exploit it for political ends.

</comment><comment><USER29> "I'll have my team get back to you on that" sounds so much nicer than "I plead the fifth" doesn't it though?

</comment><comment><USER30> Given how things are taken out of context in today's media, giving a resounding Yes to an answer which requires a detailed answer is a bade idea. Congress/Senate hearings are not exactly CS101 class. So, it is better to be keeping answers short and maybe it comes off vague.

Politician clue-ness on the issue also doesn't help.

</comment><comment><USER31> > (Zuckerberg reluctantly acknowledged that Facebook gathers information on > people who aren't signed up for Facebook for what he said were "security > purposes.")

This sort of information gathering is necessary for DDoS/Spam/Fraud prevention and so on. I'm not saying I trust Zuckerberg wasn't hiding something else, but also I understand why he didn't want to publicly comment on the heuristics they use to combat attackers.

Although at this point I don't know why Zuckerberg would be obfuscating if they really have detailed advertising profiles on logged-out users. (What would said advertising profiles be used for? Selling them to other advertisers?)

</comment><comment><USER32> If you're still using FB/IG/WA you're complicit.

</comment><comment><USER33> This particular article from Bloomberg loads (for me this time, it likely varies from one pageload to another) javascript files from these (and more, I stopped after reaching m, alphabetically) domains, many of whom are likely tracking users across sites and Bloomberg is doing so despite having no affirmative consent from me whatsoever:

      a.quora.com
      action.media6degrees.com
      ad.crwdcntrl.net
      ads.pubmatic.com
      ak.sail-horizon.com
      amplify.outbrain.com
      amplifypixel.outbrain.com
      analytics.twitter.com
      assets.bwbx.io
      bat.bing.com
      bcp.crwdcntrl.net
      cdn.perfdrive.com
      cdn.taboola.com
      cdn.teads.tv
      cdn.tinypass.com
      connect.facebook.com
      consent.truste.com
      dt.adfaceprotected.com
      horizon.sailthru.com
      in.ml314.com
      insight.adsrvr.org
      js-sec.indexww.com
      ml314.com
      ...

It's important to blame the right party here - pubmatic doesn't have a relationship with you and taboola doesn't have a relationship with you - it's Bloomberg that is sending your usage data to them. The same is true when Facebook or Google pixels are loaded (I'm sure they are there) - they are not tracking you directly, the publishers that are loading those pixels are sharing your browsing information with them. The media companies, that are manufacturing lots of faux outrage of how the internet works, largely because they mistakenly believe that if not for large tech companies, they'd make more money, which is unlikely to be true, are not only complicit here, but they are far worse about their blatant misuse of user data.

So however you feel about Facebook or Google or whoever happens to be on the hot seat at the moment, this is just how the internet works today and says more about the advertising ecosystem at large. The data collection also includes offline entities that are selling or at least "sharing" purchase data, gym check-in data, and so on. It's also important to realize that trying to stop this through regulations likely kills smaller publishers that cannot directly monetize their inventory with advertisers (because they are too small and cannot prove their trustworthiness) while benefiting larger entities that advertisers can reach directly. Google and Facebook don't need to load all these third-party JS because they can sell directly to advertisers. Google also happens to be an ad-tech intermediary but they don't need to be.

So be careful what you wish for here - while some of these privacy regulations are, in spirit, the right path forward but the articles currently bashing Facebook largely come from writers whose salaries are paid for by selling user data without affirmative consent to anyone who's willing to pay. It's likely that the publishing world won't be able to support the same number of writers once of some of the ad-tech data pipelines are broken. It's also likely that lots of people here and elsewhere who are currently complaining about privacy are likely complicit in many ways. Salesforce? It's a tracking tool where a lot of this sensitive data ends up. Oracle? Same (through their marketing cloud). Verizon? It's also an ad-tech vendor. Random Fortune 500? They are probably both selling/sharing whatever user data while their marketing teams are busy acquiring data for their campaigns. Small technology consulting firm? If you deal with lots of data, at least some of the data you're dealing was harvested this way.

</comment><comment><USER34> So why should anyone trust him? People should use open source social networks that can be audited.

<comment><USER3> The most fascinating thing about human behavior is that in spite of what people know, they still trust Facebook.

Hell, I've been a Facebook app developer. I'm deeply familiar with the breadth and depth of information Facebook allowed an app to harvest ca. 2008 or so.

I still use FB multiple times a day because I don't care about my privacy vis- a-vis the things I post there and that my friends post there.

<comment><USER34> I do care, that's why I don't use FB. Problem in using it is the network effect itself multiplied by the untrustworthy, closed and centralized foundation. I.e. you don't just harm yourself by using it, you are harming others by proliferating its use, because by using it, you are encouraging others to use it too.

<comment><USER35> I've never used it. For some reason this makes some people extremely curious as to my reasons and then very angry with me after I state them.

<comment><USER34> Why angry? In my experience most understand the problem well, but feel too dependent on FB to ditch it for good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Okay, I guess I'm the contrarian here, but I'm not sure why any of this is surprising, or even a problem.

Facebook users signed up for a free service that allows them to communicate with other people in an enjoyable manner. Facebook even went so far as to make it so enjoyable it's addictive. Free online crack. Facebook users, you're having your fun.

What would you expect Facebook to do to finance all this? They're selling the shit out of you. They sell you sideways to Sunday, then sell your Mom, too.

Why would you be upset, or even surprised? Facebook should be able to do whatever they want with your data if you're gullible enough to use their free service.

<comment><USER37> So-called "shadow profiles" are built for people who are not even Facebook users.

I do not have a Facebook account, and yet my friends and family members have been prompted to tag photos of me with my name.

I did not sign up for a free service. I am not a Facebook user, I'm not "having my fun." And yet Facebook has collected enough of a profile on me to recognize my face in photos and know who my friends and family are.

<comment><USER38> Is it a crime to hire a PI to tail someone and log their every move?

Online tracking is basically the same thing.

<comment><USER37> Depending on the state, I believe it can be. Many states have "stalking" laws preventing just the sort of behavior Facebook engages in as part of their business plan.

In most (or all?) states, PIs are licensed and also have limitations on what they're allowed to do. There is currently no license for Facebook, nor any limits that they recognize.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Zynga CEO: "Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers." - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-09-08/news/farmvillains/?repost <comment><USER2> The "social" games space is ripe for revolution. There's no fun there, nothing virtuous in what they consider gameplay. You don't even play with your friends, so much as exploit them for personal gain.

It's a very cynical view of how to spend time with people. When the leading social games company is led by a guy like Pincus, what more can you expect?

<comment><USER3> The high-profile "social" games are just really, super casual games that can be attached to something like Facebook.

The fact that they're not fun is part of why they are successful. You're just kind of trivially there, so you don't feel dorky and you don't feel like you're wasting too much time, only a moment.

All online multi-player video games are "social" games, but most of them aren't hyper-casual and can't be bolted on as a distraction to Facebook. Therefore, they feel a little dorky, a little like wasting time, and way more fun.

<comment><USER2> Yes, and that's an important observation. I'm not willing to accept that it's impossible to create a legitimately _enjoyable_ game experience in the confines of the short attention span Facebook model, though.

Scrabble, for example, lends itself perfectly to asynchronous, light, casual play (cf Scrabulous, Words with Friends). But it's legitimately fun at the same time. You're rewarded for imaginative approaches to solving problems. You can play with no skill or lots, but either way, you'll always find ways to get better.

Most important: You're genuinely spending _time with your friends_. Sharing an experience that creates a memory.

This is a big deal. This is missing from almost every other pseudo-social game.

True story: I was job hunting, someone gave me a lead at Slide. Awesome guy, gave me good advice. But as soon as I found out I had to be conversant on the subject of a "game" called "SuperPoke Pets!" I vomited a little in my mouth and moved on to other options.

Social game companies: Stop making horseshit, start building something fun. It's possible. It's just a little bit harder.

<comment><USER4> Please remember that what you find enjoyable could possibly be different than what 40-year-old moms in flyover country find enjoyable. Also realize the latter group is what made Oprah, the Wii, and Zynga billion dollar businesses.

<comment><USER2> Anyone who takes enjoyment from exploiting their friends in the furtherance of a glorified spreadsheet needs a hug, a trip to the ice cream parlor, and a meatspace game of Uno.

There may be a baseline pseudo-fun available in the current crop of social games. Most social games, though, are more interested in bare metal compulsion than truly meritorious, universally recognizable _fun_.

You're really willing to sit there and tell me that you're comfortable with social game evolution stopping right now? This stuff really is _sufficiently fun_ for you?

There's pandering to flyover country and then there's _making something good_. One will get you Oprah and Zynga. The other gets you Inception and Mad Men. One is quick cash, the other is integrity.

I'd rather take a smaller payday from people I like and respect than make crap.

<comment><USER4> > You're really willing to sit there and tell me that you're comfortable with > social game evolution stopping right now? This stuff really is sufficiently > fun for you?

You seem to have a great vision for what social games could be. I cannot urge this enough - please go build that vision now. The industry needs innovation badly. There are huge profits to the person who can pull this off, and I hope that person is you.

But my message is this - Build Stuff People Want. Many people have fallen into this trap, myself included. I thought I could buck the trend, out-innovate Zynga, and make a truly fun game. But in the end I failed because I spent too much time in an ivory tower making the perfect game, and no time making an enjoyable product.

A great analogy is engineering brilliant software, but failing to build something people want to buy.

Inception was a success because Christopher Nolan is able to carefully balance the things that make a great movie with the things that make great ticket sales. It wasn't the best movie ever, and it wasn't the best selling movie ever. But a careful blend of both lead to success.

No one in social games today can do this. I want that to change.

To think that one can simply "made something good" is a fallacious line of thinking along the lines of "build it, and they will come". Fundamental understanding of what your audience wants is so critical.

I'm not saying Zynga makes good games. I'm not saying you should follow in Zynga's footsteps. I'm saying you need to understand what Zynga does right if you want to beat them. And if you think all Zynga does is "be evil" and "buy ads", you haven't been paying close enough attention.

<comment><USER5> All of this thread about whether or not social games are fun is such an oversimplification as to be worthless.

First off, there's the semantics. What is a social game? Is it something running in Facebook? If so, you're not going to see it evolve too much too soon. That's because of the way the platform incentives are structured, the mindset of the average person who is on Facebook at the moment (more often than not at work, multitasking, able to devote only infrequent, short bursts of attention) and the inherent technical limitations of the Flash platform. If you ever saw the traffic graphs of a successful game, you'd understand immediately why casual is winning. It has a high bounce rate and peaks on weekday mornings.

If you define "social gaming" more broadly, which I think you should, then World of Warcraft, League of Legends, and many other very innovative games are social games. In that case you're already seeing social games evolve. My little cousins play Call of Duty over Xbox live with each other from their homes 50 miles apart every day. That's social gaming if you ask me, and they at least think it's fun.

There's certainly no accounting for taste. It's just plain snobbish to say the games you like are "universally recognized as fun" and the games you don't like aren't. I'd rather jam a ballpoint pen into my eye than play an asynchronous game of Scrabble. You'd sooner catch me playing Farmville.

<comment><USER2> What a nice barrel of straw men you have there. I love the bonfire you've constructed for them!

For the purposes of a thread about Zynga, it's reasonable to assume a social game in this context is, indeed, a Facebook-flavored game.

Realtime multiplayer has enjoyed a lot of evolution since you had to bind curses and status reports to your F-keys in Quake. Definitely share your enthusiasm for where it is going right now.

Asynch casual multiplayer is in a dreadful rut. The big beef I have with it is that so little of it is skill based that you can't enjoy improvement over time, except with more and more swipes of the credit card (edit: or pointless grinding). I don't think the games I like are universally recognized as fun. What I said, if you'll read my post, is that asynch casual games are relying more on ill-concealed compulsion loops than on anything an observer would look at and think "boy, that looks fun to play."

Until asynch casual multiplayer, as your semantic nitpicking requires I call it, leverages gameplay that lets players feel themselves grow more skilled, we're just not talking about anything of lasting value. Personal growth is a huge component of enjoyable gameplay and you can't just add a row to a spreadsheet game to simulate that.

<comment><USER6> Bejeweled

It's social, casual, skill based, and fun.

To answer a likely question, it's social be use I want to beat my friends scores each week

<comment><USER5> So is Farmville. One of the biggest motivators in those sorts of games is the comparison bar at the bottom that shows your level and that of your friends. Notice that is in every Flash map-based game on Facebook.

<comment><USER6> but I don't consider farmville gameplay fun which I think the previous commenters were also implying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To me this sounds like Zynga just took an idea that was already out there, improved upon it, and executed the marketing/business side of things better than their competitors.

The blatant art rip-off is evil, but the methodology of "taking something proven, and making it better" is not.

Apple does this all the time, and I don't fault them for it.

For the HN crowd who "can't find an idea for a startup", maybe this is a really good method of finding one. Look at what's successful out there, and emulate to make it better.

<comment><USER8> There is kind of a proverb related to business here, which loosely translated says something like: "In a street where there are several bakeries, it is wise to open up another bakery."

edit: I remembered that I have heard another version, with a different take: "In a street where there are several bakeries, next business that will open up will be a bakery" - I actually like that one more.

<comment><USER9> I like this. Can you give more information on the origins? E.g. in what country/language is this proverb? What's the original language text?

<comment><USER10> Somewhat relatedly to the proverb, but you might enjoy the "Emergence" episode from RadioLab. It's one of my favorite episodes and if you skip ahead to 18:56, you'll hear about 28th St Flower Market in New York which serves as a prime example.

But, I highly suggest you listen to the whole episode (hour long).

<http://www.radiolab.org/2007/aug/14/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I find myself entirely on Pincus' side.

The author of the article mistakenly assumes that Zynga's value is in Farmville/Fishville/Poker. It's not.

Pincus once said that if he could re-do tribe, he would instead build "a platform for testing ideas about how to make social networks," or something. With Zynga, Pincus has buildt an entire company mechanism for figuring out how to make money from FB games, I assume revolving around everything from what he calls "ghetto testing" to a/b tests et cetera.

Yes, Zynga obviously copied the ideas being a lot of its games. So did 300 other companies. The value in Zynga is that it beat those 300 other companies. This article gives us no way of understanding why it beat all those other companies. My guess it that it's because Zynga's value is in its "platform for figuring out how to get people to pay money for games" rather than in the games themselves.

<comment><USER12> _The value in Zynga is that it beat those 300 other companies._

That's Zynga's value to Zynga. Not Zynga's value to anyone else.

<comment><USER13> Zynga's value to its users is what allowed them to beat those 300 other customers. "Copy/improve/iterate" can, in some cases, provide more user value than "create something new."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The entire article omits the fact that Zynga furiously iterates on their designs and improves them. I remember when I first joined Facebook and finding Mafia Wars to be just a cheap knock-off of other games with practically the same name. Within months Mafia Wars was streamlining their game, adding new experiences, and making the game more responsive and pleasant to look at. Their competition, from whom they copied, hadn't changed at all.

<comment><USER15> Ah yes. Local maximum death by furious optimization. B .. b .. but our A/B tests told us that this is what people wanted!

True, we don't know what other people want, but they don't know it either (long-term).

If we always give people what they want (and nothing more), we eventually end up at the big red orgasm button, and humanity dies.

<comment><USER14> I don't know if they A/B tested their games but I do know that while I was playing the parts of the game I thought were terrible slowly disappeared and what I found appealing increased. One game mechanic I thought was terrible was the situation where you had to go back to earlier 'levels' of the game to complete your sets of items. They introduced trading. They also completely divorced the PvP aspect from the collecting game so you could practically ignore anyone setting a hit on you.

Also, I would totally play the big red orgasm button game and much like someone addicted to a TASP, die from it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I heard the CEO speak at Startup School last year, and he claimed that he wanted Zynga to be an internet treasure--something with lasting value. Sounded good to me.

His high minded spiel then seems contrarian to the report here, and I'm tempted to believe the report. Makes me less inclined to see what else he has to say.

If it's true, I'm guessing eventually, he'll lose developer and gamer mindshare in that people won't want to work for Zynga. Then, would it be on its way to an internet treasure?

<comment><USER17> I would definitely go with the report. I have lost count of the number of software companies that I have encountered that win marketshare with similar ethics to that being reported here about Zynga. They talk up sunshine and value in public but then go Ballmer on their employees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "I don't fucking want innovation," the ex-employee recalls Pincus saying. "You're not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers."

"The former employee, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly about his experience at Zynga, said this wasn't just bluster. Indeed, interviews conducted by SF Weekly with several former Zynga workers indicate that the practice of stealing other companies' game ideas — and then using Zynga's market clout to crowd out the games' originators — was business as usual."

No surprises there...

</comment><comment><USER8> I have only a second hand exposure to farmville due to an avid player close to me. I wouldn't say they don't innovate - or at least they mask it real good. Farmville is full of new stuff that ties in together all the time, but general framework looks to be less keen on innovation.

I wonder how long can they run with it though. It's like where you have an ultra strong brand for games and you innovate by pushing various forms of gameplay scenarios (think of mario in various games not related to original genre mechanics). Farmville is just like the opposite, brand is the mechanics and framework.

Seasonal stuff they put in is the only innovation over original concept they snitched from Harvest Moon and alike. So I guess farmvilles ultimate fate likes where genre-locked games go - e.g. fighting games (street fighter, mk...) where original fad fades away and leaves in core player group. If they're lucky - and with so many users, they'd have to screw up pretty badly to lose all of their gaming audience.

<comment><USER19> The concept owes a lot to Harvest Moon, but let's not kid ourselves, those are _very_ different games.

FarmVille is a well-oiled machine designed for virality, keeping people playing through social obligation and fear of loss, and monetization. It has its own peculiar kind of beauty to it. You're a 40 year old woman and your aunt, who you always keep meaning to talk with but never find the time to do, needs help with her cow. Not helping her with her cow says you don't love her. That is genius. Evil genius, but genius.

Harvest Moon, on the other hand, is a fully single person game with a story which optimizes for good reviews in magazines, because that drives box sales and that is where they make their money. It can afford to take twenty minutes until you get any control of your character, because you've already bought the game and can be assumed to wait it out. Any designer proposing that at Zynga would probably be shot, thrown out of a window, or shot after they were thrown out of a window, because it would kill the viral coefficient.

<comment><USER8> Aye, you're right about Harvest Moon - maybe "snitched" was not the word I was after for.

I don't think Zynga should be viewed as non innovative evil place as the article suggests though. Farmville is a good game in its genre. Because if it weren't, people would not play it. And I admire their driver for constant updates, which do take a lot of effort to think about and make. Tournaments, hunting for truffles with your pigs, honeybees for your bee hives, seasonal items like wedding gazebos etc...

And it's engaging mechanics works on multiple levels. There's that icebreaker level that facebook inherently drives which you've mentioned with aunt example. There's also a point based competing drive: "come on, that girl can't be a level over mine"...

Then there is show of level (sort of a competing) which I regard as most genius of all. It's geared towards women population. Where they show of new items acquired on their meticulously crafted farm designs which are more of a home+backyard than a farm. This happens in real life too, but this is more streamlined and on display to everyone you know that plays farmville. Genius.

Also, they produce lots of pixel art for their game - which is dear to my heart. So, I respect Zynga regarding farmville, a lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Smart, smart move on Pincus' part.

Zynga's already done the innovative part in figuring out marketing/distribution. Now they need to reduce other risks. Copying competitors who have good game ideas but weak marketing/distribution is a great idea.

</comment><comment><USER21> Ethical considerations aside, this seems like a solid management strategy to me. They have the brand to push through large mass of users , who are not so much into gaming as they are into socializing. If I were an investor in Zynga, I would be very happy , although I would probably use a part of the 10x ROI to buy a sweet gaming rig and play real games.

<comment><USER22> I don't know anything about this, so I'm just speculating:

Are they into socializing? Or are they just into a pleasant distraction that fires off addicting dopamine patterns that they can also share with their peers?

<comment><USER23> Those don't have to be mutually exclusive

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Pincus talked on Charlie Rose a year ago about wanting to build a lasting company as opposed to being a serial entrepreneur. I actually love that sentiment, but also think it is hard to differentiate from his current goal: going public.

Wall street investors will value this company very differently if it appears to be a fad that will have momentary glory (and revenue). That said, wall street tries to value a company's current AND future revenues (with an appropriate discount for risk and earnings out in the future) -- so Pincus is trying to get them to believe it is building the bedrock of a company that will last a hundred years.

Right now Zynga is a revenue rocketship (even if you don't like the product, people, or business) that will make Pincus and all their employees wealthy. Pretty easy to get people to work there with those prospects. The sustainable business will be the work of the next generation of employees after first 1000 have vested and moved on.

I wish them the best, but wouldn't count on them being a great stable business in 5 years. Tastes change and the best employees will have long since have cashed out.

</comment><comment><USER25> I attended a startup seminar where speakers were founders from highly successful startups. Their advice was: "First imitate and then innovate". It is a usual business practice to first copy what's working for others, then innovate to make it better and leave the competition behind. It makes sense specially in a web industry where it takes very little time to catchup with competition. Companies have to keep innovating to keep an edge over imitators. Web industry doesn't have number 2 concept. It is either number 1 or out of business. I think not having room for number 2 is what is forcing companies to copy others work and kill the competition.

<comment><USER26> There are a ton of number twos and threes on the internet. Quick sample: Bing, Yahoo!, Tagged...

<comment><USER25> If we look at sites like Facebook or Linked-in or any company building social websites/applications chances of finding number 2 is less. I haven't heard any Linked-In or Facebook competitor.

We do see number 2 like Bing, Yahoo etc because they are not startups. Bing is funded by Microsoft and Yahoo was number 1 sometime in the past and has enough money to self-sustain for a while. How long Yahoo will survive?

<comment><USER26> Tagged is a number three, not owned by a large corporation, not a previous giant.

When it comes to social networking, network effects normally result in one or two highly visible giants and a long tail of smaller, likely specialized networks. These can still be profitable, and of course there's more to the web and startups than stuff that is social in nature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Sure, this is obviously the heart of Microsoft's successful tactics. Facebook, too, considering their newest ideas have been to copy twitter and foursquare. Actually, an embarrassing number of companies think like that. Unfortunately, the marketplace rewards them - consumers are indifferent to what should be a moral outrage AND to their own best interest, which is to reward originality in the hope that it produces more innovation. Instead, they reward copying and sleaze, and the innovators are extinguished - resulting in mediocrity.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm interested in how Zynga blatantly copying competitors is positioned as evil, but when Google promotes a software and hardware ecosphere that at heart requires the blatant copying of the iPhone, it's considered necessary and smart business. It can't be evil sometimes and not evil others. If copying is just smart business, then Zynga is proving that every shred of copying allowed by law is even smarter business.

<comment><USER29> There's a huge, mind-boggling difference between doing your own take on the general idea of a touchscreen phone with a user-friendly interface and "I don't want innovation." It's like the difference between a Cubist painting and a Picasso forgery — fundamentally they're both copying Picasso, but they're not the same thing at all.

<comment><USER30> And Picasso copied Cezanne, who copied Pissarro, who copied Corot, who copied Turner, who copied Poussin, who copied Titian, who copied Bellini ... everybody copies, so why are we talking about it? Oh right, because somebody made $500 million a year doing it. Copying is an accepted fact of life until somebody gets rich. Ditto Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Call me jaded but lately I've learned that most of the wealth on the internet is generated out of "Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers."

I keep encountering folks with this attitude, and sadly it seems to be working for them, very very well. No surprises that this is deliberately disseminated at Zynga

</comment><comment><USER32> "I don't fucking want innovation", "You're not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers."

these quotes say it all, what I love from Zynga (put aside the ethical thing) is that they obsessively focus on "action" and "execution", and not "thinking". it matters because action makes the real things HAPPEN, here's why: when someone come and blame them and their whole evil philosophy they can just say that "it just happens. we just happened to build it, users just happened to use it and the company just happened to make revenue. get over it"

<comment><USER33> You can always say "It happens." I don't really understand your point. "Hey Fred, some $100 bills are missing from my wallet... you haven't seen them, have you? Ya I took em to buy some blow. It happens. Get over it."?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> On a related topic, about copying and the drool over innovation, and thinking outside the box, and whatever buzzword bingo we're on:

[http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/08/03/down-with-innovation- up...](http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/08/03/down-with-innovation-up-with- imitation/)

Well turns out this article wasn't submitted (I hope). <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1676407>

</comment><comment><USER35> Not sure this biz model is sustainable. Especially considering how much FB is changing and will continue to change.

</comment><comment><USER36> I think the companies he copied should have had the vision to add money.

All they seem to be doing is simply find a game that has gone viral and copy it and add money so the viral effect can be much faster.

Point to note: When you have something viral garner more investment to get it even bigger, quicker.

</comment><comment><USER37> I understand that Zynga is relatively good at what they do. But as a company I do not trust them at all. Just with the amount of spam advertising they do purely on Facebook it would not surprise me at all to see them sell your information to third parties.

</comment><comment><USER38> You can still add value to people's lives by improving on what already exists versus creating from scratch.</comment>


Happy Developers are Good Developers - <AUTHOR> http://www.grok-interactive.com/blog/happy-developers-are-good-developers/

<comment><USER2> As a corrolary: Angry* developers are the most effective developers.

* angry at the code

</comment><comment><USER3> please add "from the future" to the title - may 1st 2014?</comment>


Britain's Doomsday Nuke Subs Still Run Windows XP - <AUTHOR> http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a19061/britains-doomsday-subs-run-windows-xp/ <comment><USER2> As per HN guidelines, "please submit the original source". The posted article's source is this article from The Guardian:

[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/16/trident- ol...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/16/trident-old- technology-brave-new-world-cyber-warfare)

 _" Microsoft ended security updates for Windows XP in 2014, meaning that the Vanguard submarines could be vulnerable to viruses, malware, and cyberattacks."_

I'm pretty sure that the systems that are running these subs aren't being used to surf the web. They're probably not even networked with any systems outside the navy, so it's not likely that they'd be exposed to malware. I'd also guess that mission-critical systems are not physically exposed in such a way that a random sailor could plug a USB stick into them - the CPUs are probably inside locked compartments with highly restricted access.</comment>


The first scheduling Web App to support iCal integration - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/04/timebridges-collaborative-scheduler-goes-mobile-now-supports-ical/

<comment><USER2> This may not be first; I think Chandler also supports iCal.</comment>


Ask HN: What is your favorite HN post? - <AUTHOR> This has been asked in the past, but I'm curious about recent answers. <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13827136](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13827136)</comment>


Ask HN: Warmer font color? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking at some of the fonts on this page and trying to figure out why they look so much nicer than my regular ones in HTML. So, couple questions:
1. How do I get that colored warm look that the designer has used? (see pic)
http://imgur.com/rOy5T <comment><AUTHOR> I was actually talking about the colors to the side of the font-- the blues, oranges, and reds that shaded the outside of the black. It turns out that most type in my mac shows up like this, though it doesn't show up like that in inkscape where I've been doing my mockups.

Thanks all.

<comment><USER2> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is an artifact of subpixel rendering ("ClearType" on Windows, subpixel antialiasing on OS X). The Wikipedia article is quite good: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering>

</comment><comment><USER4> You mean the off-black fonts? Blueprint CSS for one uses a dark gray for its fonts: #222222 and that gives it a warmer look.

<comment><USER5> I regret the trend towards gray rather than black maintext.

<comment><USER6> Design for Hackers: Why Monet Never Used Black

<http://www.kadavy.net/blog/posts/d4h-color-theory/></comment></comment></comment>


Everything I learned from building a list from 100 to 1,000 subscribers - <AUTHOR> https://philipmorganconsulting.com/the-journey-from-121-to-1016-list-subscribers/ <comment><USER2> I love how Philip goes through the things he tried on the way there, gives away the winning formula, THEN goes on to give away tons of other useful information!

If you're starting a mailing list, or already have one, this is a must-read. Philip basically tells you what steps to skip and then hands you a winning formula on a silver platter, saving you tons of time and effort.

Crazy good stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This article is amazingly full of useful information. I'm just at the beginning of a list-building journey, and I can't think of anything better that I've read on the subject.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is insanely full of value, and if you apply just a little bit of effort, can be made widely applicable to $your_field. Listen to Philip, he's smart and has wisdom to share.

<comment><AUTHOR> <humble bow> Thank you!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the best resource to learn about modelling NoSQL data? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I like this article, [https://highlyscalable.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/nosql- data-m...](https://highlyscalable.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/nosql-data- modeling-techniques/)</comment>


Show HN: Jqview, a simple native GUI for inspecting JSON with jq - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fiatjaf/jqview <comment><USER2> You can get something fairly similar with fzf, using the --preview trick from [1]:

        echo '' | fzf --print-query --preview "cat *.json | jq {q}"

[https://paweldu.dev/posts/fzf-live-repl/](https://paweldu.dev/posts/fzf-live- repl/)

<comment><USER3> A little slow with large json datasets, but a major game changer. Thank you for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This uses [https://github.com/itchyny/gojq](https://github.com/itchyny/gojq) which is a pure Go re-implementation of jq. Can be used as a cli tool or as a library. Didn't know about this, very cool that it exists!

</comment><comment><USER5> I made a VSCode extension for jq[0], so I really like when people see the power of jq.

I should probably update it with a couple of life improvements now that I think about it.

[0]: [https://github.com/ldd/vscode-jq](https://github.com/ldd/vscode-jq)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for your plugin. I wish it had up arrow history. I keep a separate text log with commands and it would be nice if the plugin tracked them. Especially given the high numbers of jq syntax errors.

<comment><USER5> Great feature request. I've been there.

I'll look into it for sure!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I too was falling into the trap of jq, but then I discovered gron, and it turned my world upside down. Long live gron!

<comment><USER8> gron looks pretty cool, but it doesn't really seem like a substitute for jq? jq does all sorts of transformations.

<comment><USER7> yep, gron simply rewrites json into a sane format that can be then transformed by the standard tools (grep, cut, sed, awk, ...). In practice, I use gron mostly to print json data in a human readable and editable format.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [https://github.com/jcsalterego/jqq/](https://github.com/jcsalterego/jqq/) is similar, written in Ruby by HN user [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jcsalterego](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jcsalterego)

</comment><comment><USER10> If you're on macOS, I can't recommend this app enough:

[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/json- editor/id567740330?mt=12](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/json- editor/id567740330?mt=12)

jq and the like are great, but when you're trying to understand something... NSTableView is often times easier to fall back to, haha.

<comment><USER11> jq is nice because it can handle massive json files. Do you know if this app handles hundreds of mb files?

<comment><USER10> It likely works about as fine as NSJSONSerialization does, which is to say: I've had no issues, although the "validating" does sometimes lag and that can be annoying.

If someone else uses it I'd be interested in their thoughts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I started using `jq` for my API project and I have to say it makes JSON munging much nicer on the command line. I think it'd be really cool in order to have a `jq` based redirection service, where you can paste in the URL of the API you want and a query parameter of the `jq` query you want to create.

Something like:

[https://jq.io/https://myapi.com/endpoint?jqparams=$PARAMS](https://jq.io/https://myapi.com/endpoint?jqparams=$PARAMS)

So like bash via HTTP :)

<comment><USER13> That exists: [https://github.com/captn3m0/jqaas](https://github.com/captn3m0/jqaas)

<comment><USER12> Oh cool! Kinda wish you had url params vs. having to curl with request data (kinda like [https://cors-anywhere.herokuapp.com/](https://cors- anywhere.herokuapp.com/)), but wayyy better than nothing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Related tools for those working with JSON:

\- jo: convert shell ouput to JSON

\- jiq: interactive jq, useful when building complex jq queries

<comment><USER15> jid as well

<comment><USER16> Please explain what that's for.

<comment><USER17> Json Incremental Digger - [https://github.com/simeji/jid](https://github.com/simeji/jid)

"..drill down JSON interactively by using filtering queries like jq"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is pretty tangential, but it's interesting to me that the examples use Mises, Hayek, and Menger. These are three famous economists that of which Menger is a shared ancestor in the other two's academic-advisor-genealogy. In academic advisor genealogy being a direct descendant of one academic advisor just means that you had them as an advisor, thus since an advisor has multiple Ph.D. students It creates a family tree like structure. Anyways, I only learned this, because my Dad is actually an academic advisor descendant of Mises and Menger. Anyways if there is any Ph.D.s lurking here on hacker news in a mathematical field you might be able to find your own advisor genealogy here: [https://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=200008](https://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=200008)

</comment><comment><USER19> Happy to see a few Austrian school economists in the example data!

</comment><comment><USER20> jq seemed super useful when I first found it, but ultimately it was always easier to write a few lines of python to do what I needed

</comment><comment><USER21> This doesn't seem to work that well. If you type invalid syntax, like '.[' then the window suddenly resizes to accomodate the error message, but not all of the text boxes resize.

jiq is probably a better tool.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed. That is fault of my inexistent experience making "native" UIs -- or maybe the Fyne GUI framework wasn't smart enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Your hat tip to the famous Austrian economists in your examples, and the "fiat" part of your username are enough to indicate to me that we could be good friends ;-)

</comment><comment><USER23> Nice project! Though as others already said, you can use fzf very effectively to get a GUI-like experience for such tools.

If you're not a fan of jq for its syntax, check out jql[1]. It too helps you to transform json files, but does so with a consistent, lispy syntax.

[1]:[https://github.com/cube2222/jql](https://github.com/cube2222/jql)

</comment><comment><USER24> You mean?

        cat json | jq | less

I checked the code, it's concatenating the output with newlines. Not necessary at all.

<comment><USER25> Yay, useless use of cat. I think you mean

      jq . < json | less

Sorry for being pedantic. Moving on.

<comment><USER26> Yes, you can re-write it without using cat, but many people (including me) think it's clearer to read from left-to-right. Plus the mixing of sending the file through stdin and then using a pipe always makes my brain pause.

I just personally find that using cat as the first part of the pipeline makes everything easier.

Plus, if you're going to argue against useless use of cat, there's also no reason to send the file in through stdin. jq can read the file directly.

<comment><USER27> Agreed. Keeping the source on the far left (whether cat or curl) just makes things easiest to follow.

<comment><USER28> You can put `<json` on the left no problem.

(But it makes the pipeline harder to edit so actually I have no problem with `cat JSON`)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Wasn't able to run this yet.

For browsing a JSON file I can also recommend jsonfui. I've been using it for many years now and I'm actually surprised it doesn't have more stars on GitHub.

[https://github.com/AdrianSchneider/jsonfui](https://github.com/AdrianSchneider/jsonfui)

</comment><comment><USER30> I like [https://github.com/akavel/up](https://github.com/akavel/up) as this works on the command line and helps building fast pipes not only with jq, but also with every other text wrangling tool. But I wish it would be a little bit more polished.

</comment><comment><USER31> I wish jq had a different name. I don't know its functions and (JSONPath's?) syntax well, so I'm frequently trying to use it in a hurry and digging through jQuery search results to find what I need.

<comment><USER32> You should be able to add -jquery to your query to remove it as a term. Or do "jq" most of the time it works to clear your results

Also duckduckgo can be better than google sometimes

<comment><USER33> DDG is terrible with this. I've had so many jq searches with the -jquery, and yet, I still many jquery results. It's super annoying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I built a small tool named jl to convert JSON to lines of text.

[https://github.com/ajbruin/jl](https://github.com/ajbruin/jl)

</comment><comment><USER35> Nice tool, and nice choice of example names!

</comment><comment><USER36> fantastic work! installed.</comment>


Ask HN: Hosting for My Startup's Website - <AUTHOR> It seems like every time I create a new website landing page I have to start researching options from scratch.<p>What do you use to host a basic landing page for your app or startup? <comment><USER2> SquareSpace is excellent. For a static, informational site, I don't see any reason to build it from scratch, set up hosting, etc. You have more important things to do than reinvent the wheel for a marketing website.

If you insist on doing it yourself, uploading a static site to S3 and putting CloudFront in front of it is incredibly easy, inexpensive, and performant.

<comment><USER3> For static files, Firebase Hosting is great too. Easier than S3 + CloudFront , just a firebase deploy inside your project. Also, you can undo versions from their dashboard. In addition, easy integration with your domain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can use wpengine.com to build a quick site with WordPress that has all the features you're going to want.

</comment><comment><USER5> Google App Engine.</comment>


Windows Update new CPU limitation removal tool for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/p-lider/WuaCpuFix <comment><USER2> Yes Windows 10 doesn't run some apps that 7 or 8.1 does. So you need a way to use old Windows on new PC hardware.</comment>


USNews reports BPA plastic unsafe - <AUTHOR> http://www.usnews.com/articles/health/living-well-usn/2008/04/16/study-of-chemical-in-plastic-bottles-raises-alarm.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Reading the report, some of the comments suggest that people try using PET (polyethelene tetrapthalate) bottles. This sparked my interest, since in Japan almost all consumer beverage containers are PET. On a whim I looked up the safety research on PET plastics, only to find that the main research that is quoted to say they are safe is from ILSI, a chemical and big food funded affiliate group that is also associated with the Tobacco and Petroleum industries. [1]

Combine this with recent news that in practically every place they have tested (including wells, major cities in the US and Japan) there are traces of prescription drugs in the water supply [2] I think I'm going to finally give up the convenience of all those lovely beverage choices and just drink fresh tea.

[1] [http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=International_Lif...](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=International_Life_Sciences_Institute#Funding)

[2] <http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/03/10/pharma.water1.ap/>

<comment><USER2> If you submitted something good on this problem I'd vote it up, but this isn't it. There are too many better articles written on this already. Try Googling phthalates.</comment></comment>


Jq is a symptom that bash can not handle the reality - <AUTHOR> https://ilya-sher.org/2018/09/10/jq-is-a-symptom/ <comment><USER2> One could argue that Bash "is not supposed to do that", because it is supposed to allow you to use a tool like `jq` instead. So the shell remains agnostic (JSON, XML, YAML, whatever).</comment>


Show HN: Java bindings for LLVM 3.2 - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/jllvm/downloads/detail?name=jllvm-3.2.1.tar.bz2&can=2&q=

<comment><USER2> First, thank you for sharing! I've done some work on the LLVM bindings for F#.

One question though -- what made you choose the LGPL instead of a permissive (BSD-like) license? (I'm not trolling, I'm genuinely curious.)

<comment><AUTHOR> LGPL means you can _use_ the library for whatever, but you can't fork it and relicense it yourself.

I want contributions to come back to the project rather than going into distinct and relicensed forks. But, just _using_ the library won't "virally infect" your code with GPL.

So what's the problem?</comment></comment>


Recursive language and modern imagination acquired 70k years ago: hypothesis - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-08-recursive-language-modern-simultaneously-years.html <comment><USER3> Its hard for humans today to visualize higher dimensional physical spaces, even though after study, we can easily reason about them mathematically.

I wonder if that's analogous to the barrier that was crossed 70k years ago according to the theory in the article.

However, we routinely visualize high dimensional information spaces without even realizing it (though probably through some heavy dimensionality reduction). It's almost like we have the hardware for high dimensional reasoning, and some software to apply it to physical dimensions (the language of math), but no drivers to accelerate the latter with the former.

<comment><USER4> I don't think we _visualize_ high dimensional information spaces. We have tools for dealing with them, but of a completely different nature.

<comment><USER5> I understand visual perceptions and descriptions to be literal mappings of high-dimensional information spaces.

Smooth vs rough vs rippled vs grainy, fuzzy vs hairy vs spiky, striped vs mottled, etc. We get a lot of understanding of a material's properties by looking at it, coupled with prior experience with similar-looking ones.

There's even more richness involved when you take human cultures and other senses into account. I'd be surprised if I tried to turn what looks like a doorknob and it didn't wiggle even a little; every locked one I've met does. I'd be shocked if my hand passed right through it instead. And when applied to other people, my God! It's usually easy to tell when someone is angry or bored, often even if it's aimed at us vs some third party—how many dimensions does _that_ encapsulate?

Many animals are clearly capable of this too. The language appears to be the leap. It makes me wonder even more about crows talking to each other about which humans feed them, and what a shotgun looks like and can do.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, we already live in n-space. 3D is a convenient fiction that models reality in very specific instances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This Rio Journal seems to pride itself on letting you publish non traditional papers. In this case, we have something that seems clearly marked as a hypothesis. I won't comment on the value of such an approach. But I will say that it's frustrating that such a publisher would take a speculative article like that, and pick a title like "recursive language and modern imagination _were acquired_ 70k years ago"

<comment><USER8> In science we only have hypotheses -- disproven and as-yet-not-disproven. Granted, some hypotheses are less supported by data, often due to lack of data, and this one might be such a hypothesis, but, in science rejecting an idea as a hypothesis is oxymoronic.

<comment><USER9> yeah but presenting a hypothesis as fact (as the title does) is misleading at best. something like "A new hypothesis re: the development of recursive language" would be better

<comment><USER8> The second paragraph of TFA starts with "This new hypothesis" and goes from there. Titles are titles -- they've been clickbait since before we had mice to click on links with.

<comment><USER10> Every newspaper headline ever, is a form of clickbait.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> To suggest that modern imagination and the recursive thinking necessary for language evolved _after_ humans started making complex tools (which required hierarchical recursive processes to make) is, to me, dubious. The tool- creation/language similarity was commented upon recently [0].

[0] [https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.201...](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2017.0052)

<comment><USER12> The article mentions one such tool - needles with eyes. As this innovation is mentioned, I imagine the time of its invention is consistent with the hypothesis. Do you have in mind specific tools from before 70kya that seem to require recursive thinking?

I am not sure what would constitute recursion in tools - maybe something like an atlatl, sling or bow, where a tool is applied to another tool? These particular examples do not seem to challenge the timing of the hypothesis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> A problem that this hypothesis has to contend with is that there are populations of humans (Khoi san and African pygmies) who split off from the rest of humanity > 70k years ago, yet who seem pretty modern.

<comment><USER14> What could be more "modern" in this case than existing at the present moment?

<comment><USER6> From Wikipedia:

 _As an analytical concept and normative ideal, modernity is closely linked to the ethos of philosophical and aesthetic modernism; political and intellectual currents that intersect with the Enlightenment; and subsequent developments such as existentialism, modern art, the formal establishment of social science, and contemporaneous antithetical developments such as Marxism. It also encompasses the social relations associated with the rise of capitalism, and shifts in attitudes associated with secularisation and post-industrial life (Berman 2010, 15–36)._

<comment><USER13> I meant modern in the sense that the person you're responding to was using it. I'm not sure what their point was; as far as I can tell they were agreeing with me.

The Khoi San diverged from the rest of humanity roughly 200k years ago. Yet they are basically compatibly with modern humans. As far as I am aware, they have recursive language and normal imaginations. My point was that this theory would have to deal with the fact that human populations who split much, much longer ago than 70k years ago appear to have the same basic brain functionality as the rest of humanity.

I guess, based on what someone else said, the theory is positing that people with the mutation could bootstrap the process in people who don't have it. I dunno, in light of the Khoi San, things start to diverge pretty far from what I would describe as a parsimonious explanation. Plus we're talking hypothetically about what was going on in the minds of people who lived 70k years ago. There are a lot of theories that could be correct, since we have literally no direct evidence of the presence of recursive language (or the lack thereof).

<comment><USER14> The Khoi San are human and just as "modern" as us, given that we all exist right now.

<comment><USER13> _Side note: you 're being pedantic. When discussing deep human history, 'modern human' has a meaning beyond just the dictionary meaning of the word 'modern' (being of a recent vintage). It is used to contrast modern humans with our quite complex behavior vs. archaic humans with their (apparently) much less complex behavior._

But anyway, my point doesn't depend on how you define 'modern human', since not only do the Khoi San co-exist with the rest of humanity in the current moment, but they are not really significantly different from the rest of humanity in a behavioral sense. So by both definitions they are 'modern humans'. Which gets to my actual point: a theory which posits that behaviorally modern humans have their genesis only 70k years ago has some explaining to do in light of the fact that the Khoi San split from the rest of humanity about 200k years ago, yet are more or less the same as the rest of humanity.

<comment><USER14> >It is used to contrast modern humans with our quite complex behavior vs. archaic humans with their (apparently) much less complex behavior.

Yes, I know - that was my point. You seem to be assuming that we in the West are at the apex of development while the Khoi San are to be evaluated by the degree to which their society resembles Western societies. Who knows - <USER2> the Khoi San think that they are more modern than us and are waiting for us to catch up.

We all have ancestors going back to the first humans. No present human society is more "archaic" than any other, unless you think that human societies are somehow predestined to develop along a certain course.

So I do object to calling the Khoi San "pretty modern", as if they are somehow being stick-in-the-muds by not developing along exactly the same path as the West.

<comment><USER13> > You seem to be assuming that we in the West are at the apex of development > while the Khoi San are to be evaluated by the degree to which their society > resembles Western societies.

No, I am not. I have no idea how you came to that conclusion. On the contrary, my whole argument depends on the Khoi San not being significantly different, behaviorally, from the rest of humanity.

Here are quotes of what I said. The only reason I didn't use even stronger language is that there are, in fact, significant genetic differences between the Khoi San and the rest of humanity (that's how we know they diverged so long ago). But anyway, the quotes:

> (Khoi san and African pygmies) [...] who seem pretty modern.

Edit in reply to your edit: "pretty" in a colloquial sense means "very". As in, "it's pretty hot out today" = "it's very hot out today". Even the dictionary definition is "to a moderately high degree".

> Yet they are basically compatibly with modern humans. As far as I am aware, > they have recursive language and normal imaginations.

> Appear to have the same basic brain functionality as the rest of humanity.

> they are not really significantly different from the rest of humanity in a > behavioral sense

> are more or less the same as the rest of humanity

<comment><USER14> > The only reason I didn't use even stronger language is that there are, in > fact, significant genetic differences between the Khoi San and the rest of > humanity (that's how we know they diverged so long ago)

We have no evidence that the differences are particularly significant to everyday life. But in any case, your statement here makes no sense. The fact that the Khoi San are (to whatever minuscule extent) genetically different from "us" does not make them any less modern than us. Divergence is symmetrical: as we diverged from the Khoi San, they diverged from us, and there's no sense in which they're "older" than we are. So I still don't understand why you are only willing to credit them with being modern "to a moderately high degree". There's nothing to qualify. They're humans just like we are.

<comment><USER13> A couple of things:

1\. You are not interpreting the use of the modifier 'pretty' correctly. It is used for emphasis or to add or increase some property; to imply that something is more than usual. To say that 'it is pretty hot today' means that it hotter than if you merely said 'it is hot today'. Thus, when I say 'pretty modern', I am indicating a degree of modernity that is more modern than simply 'modern'. As far as I can tell, you are interpreting 'pretty' to mean that something is lacking in a quality or falls slightly short of possessing a quality. But that is the opposite meaning of the word. If I were trying to detract from their modernity, I would have said that they are 'kind of modern' or 'somewhat modern'.

2\. The bigger picture, though, is that you're focusing on a single word choice instead of literally everything else I've written, including the crucial point that _I have to agree with you for the point that I was actually making to hold true_.

<comment><USER14> That is not what 'pretty' means, FYI (check the dictionary definition, which in the case of the OED gives "somewhat" as a synonym). It's sometimes used to convey a stronger proposition via understatement, but that doesn't come across in your original post. Nor does it jibe with the rest of what you said (e.g. that the Khoi San are "more or less" the same as the rest of humanity).

I'm glad we agree on the rest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So if it happens as in the synopsis, it would have been pretty weird to grow up as one of the first kids with recursive language? And I guess the gene takes over the world because well, you want to mate with other people who understand prepositions.

<comment><USER16> As the article mentions it's only 70k years ago that we start seeing unambiguous indicators of intelligence. The normal figure for this indicator, the upper paleolithic revolution, is 50k years. In any case that's where we first start seeing significant and then rapidly widespread signs of intelligence - fishing, extensive adornment, wide artifact collections, burial ceremony, and much more.

The point here is that the archaeological record seems to indicate that it's like one day we simply 'woke up.' Whomever was fortunate enough to experience such a mutation first would have had a _tremendous_ competitive advantage. The degree in intellectual advancement is such that they would have probably been significantly better at just about everything -- most importantly in surviving and spreading their genes. Now take this person and what would likely have been their vast number of offspring. They could effectively take over the world. And I suppose, in a manner of speaking, they did.

<comment><USER17> It is entirely possible the capacity for this existed but was not being used. That would explain why it spread so rapidly... perhaps most humans already had the capacity?

<comment><USER18> I think it's implied that the capacity was there, just no impetus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > To understand the importance of PFS, consider these two sentences: "A dog > bit my friend" and "My friend bit a dog." It is impossible to distinguish > the difference in meaning using words or grammar alone, since both words and > grammatical structure are identical in these two sentences.

Am I missing something here? Those two sentences are absolutely distinguishable grammatically - in one of the them the subject is "a dog" and the object is "my friend" and in the other the subject is "my friend" and the object is "a dog".

I realize this is kind of nitpick, but at the very least this is a very bad example to use to demonstrate the importance of this PFS concept.

<comment><USER20> You're confusing semantics with grammar. They have identical grammar.

"(A dog) bit (my friend)." "(My friend) bit (a dog)." Both parse as "(compound subject) verb (compound object)." Both "my" and "a" function as adjectives modifying the single noun after them.

The sentences have identical parse trees, even when considering the types of the nodes. They are grammatically identical.

<comment><USER21> Are they though? Isn't 'a' an indeterminate article and 'my' a pronoun?

I get the point of the example, but it seems different at the grammatical level too.

Subject/object should be at a different level above grammar.

<comment><USER22> "A dog bit a friend" and "my dog bit my friend" still work the same, though.

<comment><USER21> Indeed, I think it's just an incorrect example, the point gets across anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> There seem to be counterexamples. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child#Raised_in_confinem...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child#Raised_in_confinement)

"Isabelle (1938) was almost seven years old when she was discovered. She had spent the first years of her life isolated in a dark room with her deaf-mute mother as her only contact. Only seven months later, she had learned a vocabulary of around 1,500 to 2,000 words. She is reported to have acquired normal linguistic abilities."

</comment><comment><USER24> I wonder about similar future change in imagination. Almost certainly possible since there's precedent for it happening, but the hard part is imagining what sort of thought it would enable.

<comment><USER25> Just like the dark ages, particularly in medicine, practitioners followed text from hundreds of years prior, without any perceptions without. Only memorizing and being SME on past thought was relevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> "PFS" sounds a lot like the MERGE operation of minimalist (natural language) syntax, which Chomsky has similarly linked to behavioural modernity.

[https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/06/20/noam-chomsky-the- sc...](https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/06/20/noam-chomsky-the-science- language/) (not too much info here, but the best I can find at the moment)

</comment><comment><USER27> Quite remarkable a single mutation gave us the tools to dominate the earth.

I guess the ability to make plans, communicate and execute them and reflect on what worked and what didn't to improve the plan making endows us with significant predictive power compared to the rest of the planet. Perhaps in similar ways AI will endow some people (or itself) with predictive power beyond our own, allowing those who yield it to dominate the rest

<comment><USER28> >Perhaps in similar ways AI will endow some people (or itself) with predictive power beyond our own, allowing those who yield it to dominate the rest

Hasn't that already happened?

Bezos Gates Zuckerburg Musk?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> [https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/22/163397584/h...](https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/22/163397584/how- human-beings-almost-vanished-from-earth-in-70-000-b-c) \-- also happened about 70k years ago. Very interesting time to be a human

</comment><comment><USER30> How many artefacts that show imagination and will survive >70k years have you made lately?

Are you intelligent?

<comment><USER31> Most people in this thread have taken part in the production of non- biodegradable trash. A huge fraction of ancient artifacts were trash, so don't feel bad about your legacy - it's typical. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is quite similar in some ways to my own theory that I posted recently at [https://whatismusic.info/blog/HypothesisMusicWasALanguageSys...](https://whatismusic.info/blog/HypothesisMusicWasALanguageSystem.html), because it postulates a sudden transition from non-recursive language to recursive language. The one difference in my theory is that I assume that the original non-recursive language was musical (with one tune equals one meaning). And musical language could not evolve into a more efficient and expressive recursive form of language - it had to be replaced.

</comment><comment><USER33> If anyone is interested in early human development/the onset of civilization I highly recommend the book "Sapiens". Really compelling pop-science book if you are interested into that kind of thing.

</comment><comment><USER34> I have a little Romulus & Remus & wolf statue at home, from my wife's grandfather when he passed. I wanted it because of its ties to Girard's mimetic theory. Now I have a 2nd reason.

</comment><comment><USER35> Hadn't people spread out from Africa, longer ago than that?

</comment><comment><USER36> I wonder if John von Neumann would have had some toddler friends of similar level of genius, would they have invented a twin speak for a "new level" of humanity.

<comment><USER31> Intelligence variations in modern times seem pretty big, but they're nothing compared to the difference between a person who can talk and one who can only make indicative noises.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20613863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20613863)

</comment><comment><USER38> But some races were likely separated for longer than that, so these mutations are likely uneven across populations. Very disturbing if true.

<comment><USER39> Or they seperated after having this mutation since we've no evidence that any specific ethic group (I assume you used race for this?) has inability of learning a recursive language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Does that mean that Scheme and other languages with TCO help make more imaginative programmers?

<comment><USER20> This is talking about recursion in the grammar of the language. I can't think of a common programming language that doesn't have at least some recursive elements. Nested arithmetic operations are a common example.

<comment><USER40> > _This is talking about recursion in the grammar of the language._

I know, it talks about early humans development. I just wanted to extend it (semi-jockingly) to programming.

> _I can 't think of a common programming language that doesn't have at least > some recursive elements_

Sure, but recursion is more idiomatic/powerful in some languages than others. In nested arithmetic operations it is barely apparent.</comment></comment></comment>


Specification for PHP - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/php/php-langspec/blob/master/spec/00-specification-for-php.md

<comment><USER2> One thing that always bothered me about PHP is that neither the interpreter writers nor the PHP developers knew if they were on the same page. It is nice to see that is being fixed.</comment>


Microsoft Teams overtakes Slack with 13M daily users - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/11/20689143/microsoft-teams-active-daily-users-stats-slack-competition <comment><USER2> Would be useful to note how many users of Teams do so, where their employer pays specifically for it. My guess is that most users of Teams are effectively corporate 'Microsoft shops' who effectively get Teams for free with their Office365 bundle.

Another useful statistic to ascertain: how many startups or small businesses use Slack compared to in large corporates?

</comment><comment><USER3> I tried using Slack in my business and found it to be not as effective as Basecamp. Basecamp has very strong project management and communication features EXCEPT it is hard to order by priority if you have multiple users and multiple projects.

Also - Slack is WAY more expensive than Basecamp. I would pay $1,000+ per month for Slack vs the $100 something I am paying each month for Basecamp.

<comment><USER4> Yea. I have no problem (well, few problems) with the Slack product, but it's way more expensive than its competitors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Teams is such a step up from Lync/Skype For Business. The screen sharing and conference features are so much better and work well. I just wish my organization used it for more than IMing each other and actually messages in threads in teams.

</comment><comment><USER6> The key difference is that an active user on Microsoft Teams is someone with an outlook mailbox, and an active user on Slack is someone who uses Slack

<comment><USER7> That's not how it works.

<comment><USER8> That's not how it works to a reasonable person, but marketers can count however best suits them.

<comment><USER9> As long as they don't mind fighting with the SEC, sure.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN:  Mismatch between older founder interests and first adopter interests? - <AUTHOR>

As you grow older, your interests change.
The first adopter crowd is probably mostly in their 20s/early 30s.
So it seems it that older founders may have a harder time creating a product that is of interest to people in that age group; they would probably rather create and have more success with products for older people.
However, when creating a product for older people, viral marketing would be a problem as older people are less likely to try out new things and tell their friends.
And so it seems that they would need quite a lot of money for more traditional forms of advertising. <comment><USER2> Are you saying that older people cannot innovate on the bleeding edge of X industry / discipline? Or are you saying older people are not early adopters? I'm both. I'm older. I'm a founder. I'm an early adopter and I experience viral marketing from my age peers as well as older and younger people that I know.</comment>


The Sad Spectacle of Cities Grovelling to Amazon - <AUTHOR> https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/10/the-sad-spectacle-of-cities-groveling-to-amazon <comment><USER2> I don't buy arguments of an author, he's building strawman and fights with it.

Couple examples from an article: > Louisiana nearly bankrupted its state treasury writing checks to the film industry, as part of a doomed effort to turn New Orleans into the "Hollywood of the South." (When the checks dried up, the industry left.)

Movie industry is project based, it's easier to move in/out (I assume). To make movie is much lesser commitment than to relocate 50k people in the area.

> The case of sports stadiums is notorious. Sports teams force municipalities > to spend a fortune building new stadiums, on the promise that the local > economy will be "stimulated." They can then threaten to leave unless they > receive further bribes. (And it turns out that they don't stimulate much at > all, bringing few economic benefits in return for the millions of dollars > spent appeasing team owners.)

Office buildings and city infrastructure are not stadiums, and Amazon isn't sport team. (How much people do they employ? I can't formulate query but I hardly believe that it's more than 1000)

disclaimer: Amazon employee, but I'd made this comment this even if I weren't.

</comment><comment><USER3> While the problems with cities giving big business too many perks is a serious one, by the end of the article it seems this is just another negative piece on Bezos, "a demented tyrant", by the author.

</comment><comment><USER4> Their own inability to address their own problems _

</comment><comment><USER5> Competition is good duh.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's the sad spectacle of mayors groveling for money, but then there's a longer term sad spectacle of many of these failing local governments engaging in long term corruption, slighting people for short term gains, and particularly upstate New York where the onion wrote an article making fun of a cities proposal, an area which is notorious for it's brain drain where union workers, rigged business models, ..all with the buffalo billions scandal (just Google it, about the solar City plant in buffalo) still overhanging in the midst of a state governor engaged in three stacked federal investigations on top after one of the most abysmal and embarrassing presidential election in American history, both candidates being from New York, regardless of which side you take. Corruption, and a long history of incestuous government and business politics with a culture of conflicts of interests and corruption being the norm, meanwhile driving out every big company that has wanted to come to the point that solar City/Tesla the new chip factory want to have nothing to do with them, is really due to one thing, the self destructive nature of people who take and slight people for short term gains, or use their power to embed themselves from criticism and ensure entitlement to things they do not continually have to prove they have earned.

In the long run, this mentality results in a brain drain, and a sad cycle of cities being poor, raising homeowners taxes further until all the people successful enough to own homes leave to go elsewhere and take their jobs with them, until the government is solely responsible for providing economic welfare to the people. After decades of this, governments become used to playing both the economy and the government and lose all concepts of a healthy balance between the two.

After living in cities like this, and growing up poor I can say I don't think it means these cities shouldn't try or that the rest of the world should forget about them, I just mean there is something so inherently self destructive about the idea that cities that grovel for business ironically display their own ability to address their own problems. Being self sufficient, and fostering that sense in people even to people who are born in an economic disadvantage is important for ones own sense of what they can accomplish. When a city has a government used to playing god government and business and the city is accustomed to being the victim bad things happen.

I can say it's a sad story. Most people who grow up in cities this isolated and depressed are not only unknowing of how to advocate for themselves, many have justified their culture by being voilently xenophobic against people perceived to have "money" contributing an even more viscious cycle of the brain drain.

New York has been losing young people for over 25 years. I don't suspect Amazon would come here, but even so it would take decades to see a real culture change and ultimately every individual needs to contribute to a positive change and a success attitude.

I was in Seattle this summer and anytime Amazon or an Amazon employee came up, people in Seattle became slighted and disgusted and immediately blurted out some passive agressive comment about Amazon or a negative stereotype about Amazon employees, even from store owners down the street from Amazon buildings that clearly benefited from the company being there, but didn't seem to understand that or be grateful or even objectively consider their self destructive attitude. This happened to me several times while being in Seattle and visiting friends at Amazon.

It is because of that culture that is hard to change that even after all this time of Amazon being there, still within a stone's throw away is hate and animosity to the very thing poor cities seem to think their people will benefit from. Assigning blame to either the company the people the mayor's or Amazon employees doesn't seem like a productive conclusion, but acknowledging that the behavior I've witnessed to anyone who realizes where I work even if I never mention it, immediately becomes hostile to me and assumes the worst about my character and motivation ("all you care about is money" actually no all I cared about was physics in highschool and I kept pursuing my curiosities never parties worked hard in highschool and college and everyday since then for something I'm endlessly curious about and never got a degree in political science or economics but here I am responsible for what you deem to be an inequality I meticulously designed for your demise).</comment>