Nintendo Makes It Clear That Piracy Is Only Way to Preserve Video Game History - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wjm5kw/nintendo-makes-it-clear-that-piracy-is-the-only-way-to-preserve-video-game-history <comment><USER2> I basically already had this happen on my end years ago. I worked as a designer/producer on two games developed and published to WiiWare: Evasive Space and NEVES Plus.

But our publishing company went under, and Nintendo took the games down several years ago. I still have them on my hard drive on my Wii, and I hunted down copies of the files so I could keep them in my collection, but there's no way for anyone else to get those games legally anymore. And they were pretty decent games, too (Evasive Space was probably too hard in retrospect, but still fun. NEVES was a solid puzzle game with lots of modes and a Patapon-ish character art).

It sucks. I wish I could tell friends and family to check the games out, but about the only thing I can do now is link to Youtube videos.

If I had the rights, plenty of cash, and the licenses, I would have ported these for other platforms, but instead they're just trapped in time (except for emulators), and I'm sure already pretty much forgotten. but at least there's emulators.

NEVES Plus Trailer: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQb19p09Y7Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQb19p09Y7Q) Evasive Space Trailer: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhpKxYtuuug](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhpKxYtuuug)

There's other games I worked on for companies that are no longer easy to get either, these are just the two that were on the Wii.

<comment><USER3> About the only thing you can do is keep a copy of them, keep the copies updated and backed up, then wait 20-30 years, and assuming anyone is still using the hardware, let them out then.

Likely, any principals or others with any interest about the game probably won't remember or won't care - heck, they might even be happy.

It has happened with a lot of 8-bit stuff from the 80s (mostly home computer software); with the exception of Nintendo of course. The Disney of games I guess.

Ultimately, you have to wait and hope such companies pass away - though as we both know, Nintendo is a very old company, so that might not be an option.

At that point, I'd just wrap up your archive, then figure out a way to put it on the internet with plausible deniability and/or anonymity (it can be done).

<comment><USER2> I don't have the code to these, at least. I wish I did. I worked for the publishing company, and we never got the actual code, just the builds. I think I still have a few older builds around somewhere, though.

I still have a copy of the code for a game for another defunct startup, and every once in awhile I get the urge to try to contact someone and see if they don't mind me porting it (I don't see how they could, they barely cared about the game even back then). I have tons of other projects that are higher priority, though. Still pains me that that one isn't still available for people to play, though.

Honestly, I wish all of these things that I put so much of my life could still be playable. Basically my entire professional career in the game industry is a black hole, whereas the games I made and released on my own 6 years previous to that are still playable online, and I'm currently working porting and updating a game I made and released on the Xbox 360. Trying to get that out in time for its 10th year anniversary next year.

Part of the reason why I started getting into board game design is because once they're made, they're out there, and people can play them, they can't be taken down by a company or become obsolete due to dying platforms, and if I ever want to show them to new people, I can just bring them to a party. And I can always put a print and play copy up that people can mess about with.

<comment><USER4> You might consider getting in touch with Jason Scott at the Internet Archive (@textfiles both here and on Twitter), and shipping him a hard drive to put the files you mention into cold storage (where they're archived, but not accessible).

The Internet Archive has an emulator to enable the playback of orphaned video games in browser.

<comment><USER2> That's good to know. I actually have some other things that are possibly rare and/or unique that he might be interested in too, that I wasn't sure what to do with, but didn't want them to just sit in my basement until they stop working. They're on flash cards for consoles though, not hard drives.

<comment><USER4> I have no doubt Jason can facilitate the extraction from whatever media you have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nintendo is one of the worst game companies when it comes to dealing with online / their fans. The YouTube / Twitch streaming controversy was just ridiculous... They will also aggressively chase down people who run sites that preserve old games that aren't even produced anymore even if they don't intend to allow people any access to them in the future.

As far as they're concerned people shouldn't be allowed access to these historic works, no matter the circumstances.

It's pretty sad behavior from a company beloved by so many.

By the way, I also find it really interesting that video games are software, a special kind of software that we assign a very particular type of value to that's not really monetary. We want to keep them alive and enjoy them so long after their time has passed. It's so much different than, say, a copy of Photoshop 2.11 or Winamp 3.

<comment><USER6> >By the way, I also find it really interesting that video games are software, a special kind of software that we assign a very particular type of value to that's not really monetary. We want to keep them alive and enjoy them so long after their time has passed. It's so much different than, say, a copy of Photoshop 2.11 or Winamp 3.

Creative works are valued longer because new creative works don't function as replacements. There's only one Canterbury Tales or Super Mario World.

An old photoshop copy is more like an old almanac, it is a tool.

<comment><USER3> > An old photoshop copy is more like an old almanac, it is a tool.

Sometimes, though, the old tool is better than a new one.

For instance, if I have a choice between a Craftsman wrench from say, 1970, vs a brand new one from today - guess which one I'm going to choose?

Software can be like this as well; indeed, there are some DOS apps out there for which there isn't a good replacement available (though they can be niche - which is probably why).

<comment><USER7> There's a lot of software that used 20MB at the most in the XP days, but doesn't run on windows 10 or is missing some random new 2010+ era feature and just needs a patch, but now the only modern version of this software is a minimum-viable-product SaaS monthly subscription.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is why I'm not a fan of Steam-type stores... they'll eventually be gone, and the games I've paid for won't be accessible.

Occasionally I love going back through my old CD-Rs (copied to hard drive, of course), finding old troves of files, projects, and games. That's why I always get the latest Factorio as direct download - I know someday in 20 years time I'll be hankering to bust that out again!

<comment><USER9> Not only that, but Steam games get fucked with after release, so you can't even necessarily get the original game if Steam is still operating.

[https://www.pcgamer.com/au/grand-theft-auto-san-andreas- stea...](https://www.pcgamer.com/au/grand-theft-auto-san-andreas-steam-update- removes-songs-resolution-options/)

(songs removed from San Andreas due to time-limited music licenses, apparently at some point the renderer was replaced with the one used for iOS)

I think you can't downgrade to an old version of Stranger's Wrath either, but I could be wrong there. [https://www.destructoid.com/oddworld-stranger-s- wrath-finall...](https://www.destructoid.com/oddworld-stranger-s-wrath- finally-goes-hd-on-steam-235041.phtml)

Then there are games like Diablo III where you need to be online to play single player, and therefore need a current patch, which means they can nerf or fuck with in any way they want a game you already liked and may no longer like after the changes.

Having to follow patches sucks, and piracy is often the only way to avoid it.

<comment><USER10> WoW is a pretty good example of this too. Patches and expansions changed so much over the years that many players feel like it isn't the same game anymore. Blizzard fought against private servers running the classic game for years, until the pay finally decided to make official classic servers. (But if your favorite iteration of the game was something between classic and current, you're still out of luck.)

<comment><USER11> Sounds like RuneScape too.

They even killed the official classic version not too long ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Copyright law needs to be amended to remove copyrights from media which is no longer readily available. If a company stops distributing their copyrighted materials, then it is safe to assume that it is no longer economically viable to do so, thus, they aren't losing money if it is put into public domain.

<comment><USER13> I don't disagree, but I don't think this would not work for all copyright. It might work for "personal use" reproduction - books, video games.

I don't think it would work for the 'public performance' part of copyright - composers, playwrights, movie directors.

For example, a lot of contemporary music is not published at all. If you get a score from the composer, you still have to pay royalties when you perform the music publicly.

<comment><USER14> > I don't disagree, but I don't think this would not work for all copyright.

My head is spinning...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This seems disingenuous when talking about offline games stored on an SD card - when you buy a CD and the CD is destroyed or the store that you bought the CD closes you don't have an expectation that you will always get new copies of that CD.

With games that are online only, one also expects that wen the service is shut off you won't have access. This is pretty accepted (but would be nice if there were some way to preserve the server code)

But games that are inherently offline and perform online checks are the worst. If I get something on steam that checks in with steam every 10 minutes, then steam goes away, then I'm pretty miffed.

<comment><USER16> The thing is that with a CD, you can easily make backups.

With games with DRM stored on SD, who knows? If you copy the files then you'll probably be able to play it on the console... Provided it's the one you bought it on? I wouldn't even bet on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > As it stands, even after the store officially closes, Wii users will be able > download any past titles they've purchased and downloaded from the Wii Shop > Channel, provided they can fit them on either the Wii's internal storage or > an additional SD card. However, Nintendo said that in a yet unknown point in > the future, the company will close all services relating to the Wii Shop > Channel, "including the ability to redownload WiiWare and Virtual Console > games, as well as the Wii System Transfer Tool, which transfers data from > Wii to the Wii U system."

Seems understandable. At some point you'll hit end of life with software and support will end. I'm sure they'll give plenty of notice, and I'd imagine it's 5-10 years out. I'm sure if you called support and told them that your NES cartridges didn't work any more they'd probably just tell you to blow on it.

* Myth debunked: Blowing in your Nintendo games never actually fixed anything – GeekWire || [https://www.geekwire.com/2014/blow-nintendo-games/](https://www.geekwire.com/2014/blow-nintendo-games/)

<comment><USER18> Nintendo used to sell Official Nintendo Cleaning Kits specifically in response to blowing on cartridge card edges, to prevent people from damaging their NES carts due to moisture oxidation.

All but the most severely dusty NES carts should work just as well as a clean cart. NES carts failed mainly because of a fault in the NES front loader mechanism.

Me, I had a TI-99/4A before owning a NES. Random hangs and glitches were normal to me. (The TI-99/4A was prone to overheating.)

<comment><USER19> That and Nintendo installed an incredibly touchy DRM chip that demanded a cleaner signal than was strictly necessary for the game to work.

<comment><USER20> My favorite thing about the 10NES is how the easiest way to get a Famicom->NES adapter is to open one of the first wave of NES carts, because those were made on Famicom boards and then have an interposer with the 10NES chip on it. [1]

Though in digging up a source for this, I discovered my new favorite thing, which is that Tengen (infamously) made a (mostly) cleanroom duplicate of the 10NES and got sued over it, and when a company recently wanted to make NES cartridges, they reverse engineered Tengen's chip in turn. [2]

[1] - [https://www.reddit.com/r/gamecollecting/comments/frpyh/you_m...](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamecollecting/comments/frpyh/you_may_already_have_an_official_famicomtones/)

[2] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIC_(Nintendo)#Nintendo_Entert...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIC_\(Nintendo\)#Nintendo_Entertainment_System)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The real question is when are people going to get the message?!

The incentives of commercial online publishers were clear from their very beginning. The pattern of retroactively pulling content began quite some time ago.

I'm sympathetic if someone really doesn't know any better, succumbs to all that advertising pushing them towards $proprietary_service and thinks thats the cool path, only to get ripped off later on.

But anyone familiar with the idea of _personal computing_ has no excuse! Stop investing your mindshare into this proprietary app-poverty. It's mildly easier in the beginning, but you're paying incrementally every time the business invents a new way to fuck.

Meanwhile if you do a slight bit of self-actualization to adopt a _personal computing based_ setup, it's not just going to shift out from under you. _Your_ ROM collection won't just disappear out of the blue one day, nor will your emulator stop working because eg the developer went out of business or insists on pushing a new one with "improved" advertising/surveillance/control and it's incompatible with your usage.

</comment><comment><USER22> News of the shutdown made me think of this guy:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/a97diy/my_79yo_fath...](https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/a97diy/my_79yo_father_exercises_with_wii_fit_almost/)

</comment><comment><USER23> We say buying digital games but in reality we are renting digital games. Also, a lot of times paying the price of physical games for these rentals.

<comment><USER19> In particular, this is a way for companies to skirt the law, specifically the Doctrine of First Sale. By never letting consumers actually purchase the product they aren't afforded many of the legal protections that were hard fought for on physical goods.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> What blows in particular is that some of those games only found their way stateside via the Wii store. _Sin & Punishment_ comes to mind. You can find ROMs of the original Japanese N64 version online, but I doubt anyone has ROMs of the US/PAL versions for the Wii that had localized menus (the dialogue was already in English).

<comment><USER20> Given that the Wii Virtual Console games were a bundled emulator and ROM, and you could swap the latter out, I imagine the content is indeed available.

<comment><USER25> GBATemp users have reported that the game gets localized at runtime[1], rather than a a modified ROM. Kind of ingenuous on Nintendo Redmond's part[2].

One would likely have to use Dolphin to emulate the Wii emulating the game.[3]

[1] [https://gbatemp.net/threads/sin-and-](https://gbatemp.net/threads/sin- and-) punishment.183066/

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

[3] [https://wiki.dolphin- emu.org/index.php?title=Sin_%26_Punishm...](https://wiki.dolphin- emu.org/index.php?title=Sin_%26_Punishment)

<comment><USER20> Lord, Nintendo, _why_?

That's like killing a fly with a suitcase nuke.

<comment><USER25> I can't really speak for the main reason why, but my guess is that it gave Nintendo a level of flexibility with localizing the game without having to set up a Nintendo 64 development environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I bought a good number of games from xbox store but got out of the habit and didn't log in for a few years. Went through the pretty painful process of logging in to my account again recently on a new console, no sign of any purchases and if I tried to download them from store I was prompted to pay for them.

</comment><comment><USER27> Someone should file a class action lawsuit to sue for refunds on all funds Nintendo received for product they are now rendering worthless.

</comment><comment><USER28> I would have thought it obvious that if need an online service to access something, then you are eventually going lose access to that something when the service inevitably closes down.

Also _in the context of ROMs_ (and other pre-internet games) I do contest the general thesis that piracy is the only road for preservation. You don't need to distribute ROMs to the public to preserve them. Put them in a museum if you want and they could be preserved perfectly fine without needing to resort to piratism.</comment>


Ask HN: Is Facebook still innovating? - <AUTHOR> We all know that Facebook is busy now implementing (or pretending to implement) some privacy features. But did Facebook do anything innovative in the last, let's say, 2 years anyway? <comment><USER2> Absolutely. In fact, they _have_ to in order to grow because at their scale, there is no precedent.

Things like React, lots of open source contributions, being one of the leaders in AI, being one of the leaders in VR, making huge strides in data center hardware, delivering internet to underserved regions etc. I could go on and on. They are absolutely innovative and I think anyone who is involved in the technology industry deeply would agree.

The thing that people commonly disagree on is the question "to what meaningful end?".

To that question, I will keep my opinion to myself. Discussion about that on HN often devolve into meaningless shouting matches and people informing others that they left Facebook 2 years ago. It's not the type of discussion I want to be involved in.

</comment><comment><USER3> Did they ever innovate? What other products has Facebook brought to the world outside of Facebook that changed the world?

Unless we consider acquisitions such as Instagram, WhatsApp & Oculus. Sure, they have released interesting tech such as React, Thrift, PyTorch, GraphQL but I don't consider these innovations in the sense some on here might.

When I think about innovations, I think in terms of consumer products, products that have changed the world. Outside of search, gmail is heavily used, google office is sufficiently used, Google pulled off amazing tech in terms of tech unlike anything anyone has ever seen. Borg, Spanner, etc.

Of all the Facebook tech I mentioned the only one that might be somewhat innovative is GraphQL. I'm not a windows/C# person, but it reminds of of "Linq" so it might not be that innovative.

</comment><comment><USER4> Found this great article a couple of days ago: [https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/08/one-family-under- cox/?utm_...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/08/one-family-under- cox/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29)

One thing is for sure: for a company of their size, they're definitely innovating in terms of management and dominating through their acquisition strategy.

</comment><comment><USER5> It seems that after the Zack-Trial, they're experimenting with different business models though. Dating.. cryptocurrencies.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yup, It is. Just heard they are near to introduce their own digital currency</comment>


Let's create a new country, and let's do some things in a different way - <AUTHOR> http://martinweigert.com/lets-create-a-new-country-and-lets-do-some-things-in-a-different-way/

<comment><USER2> ...and ponies for everybody! This is silly blue-sky talk, with no notion of how things will get paid for or how conflicts get resolved.

</comment><comment><USER3> Where do I sign up?</comment>


Toddler Password – Get a secure password generated by a toddler - <AUTHOR> http://www.toddlerpassword.com <comment><USER2> This is cute, but I'm dubious. It generated "y3aEmic8B217" as my password. Kid just happened to hit the shift key while also pressing E and then B? It looks a little too random to me. When I pound on the keyboard, I get results that look more like "fjlsd;lasf".

<comment><USER3> My guess is they're using what the toddler typed to seed an RNG?

<comment><USER2> Yeah, the verbiage says that his typing is merely the "basis" for the resulting password, so you're probably right.

<comment><USER4> Which means the password has much less entropy than it appears to have. It's a fun implementation, but not serious

<comment><USER5> So, kinda, sorta, mostly no.

We have these things called stream ciphers. You put a little bit of randomness in, and you get what seems to be lots of randomness out. For example the cipher might need a 256-bit key and 128-bit nonce and then spit out gigabytes of seemingly random data.

Now, mathematically they can't /really/ be making more randomness, there's no random steps it's all deterministic, in principle it ought to be possible to unwind the steps and get back the initial random state. But it turns out that unwinding step just can't actually be done with a good stream cipher, that's the whole point.

We do this sort of stuff a lot in real modern cryptography. There's a HN article which might still be on the front page, it was earlier today, explaining how SSH works. It shows that six keys are needed for SSH encryption, but they don't go get six times the randomness you'd need for a single key, they can just use a cryptographically strong hash function and make six different keys from the same shared secret randomness.

Let's do an experiment:

I've rolled my hex dice a few times to create a 64-bit random number.

I've pushed that as ASCII text into MD5 and got back a result, and now I'm going to tell you the first and last characters of the result:

F31FB042................81AFD8FA

That's 64-bits. If you were correct with this idea about entropy you could tell me what the missing bits are, infact you could prove it to other posters - after all I have given you all the randomness according to your thinking, there can't be any left.

But in fact you have no idea what those missing bits are, no idea what the original 64-bit number was, because you are wrong, with cryptographic primitives like hashes or stream ciphers we can in practice take a relatively small amount of entropy (like a few minutes of keyboard bashing by a toddler) and that's enough for all purposes.

The _real_ reason you shouldn't use this to make passwords is that the site might be lying and keeping a record of every password that is chosen and which IP address it was given to etcetera.

<comment><USER6> This is not the case because one could enumerate the entire 64bit space and perform a rainbow table attack on your scheme.

<comment><USER3> Simple brute force is not a rainbow table.

Brute forcing 2^64 bits means calculating 2^63 MD5s in expectation. You can do ~100 GHash/sec, so ~2^37/s, so about 2^29s which is 17 gpu-years. So this is doable, but incredibly expensive.

<comment><USER5> I'm glad my eyeballing the difficulty came off here.

It was tempting to pick say 128-bits of randomness and SHA-512/256 where I'd stake actual money that it just cannot be done - but that's like twice as much die-rolling and typing. On the other hand if I do 32-bits (fewer rolls) and MD5 there's probably some loser out there who has already precomputed all of those for whatever reason and then somebody finds the answer with a Bing search and doesn't end up learning anything.

      echo -n 'F004672790DB5B1D' | md5sum
      f31fb042501c2a398974feca81afd8fa  -

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's the stock photo:

[https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/cute-baby-boy- sitti...](https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/cute-baby-boy-sitting-in- nature-with-laptop-royalty-free-image/174751793)

<comment><USER8> It's possible Max is also in the stock photo business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> [https://www.toddlerpassword.com/privacy](https://www.toddlerpassword.com/privacy)

Why does this need analytics and thus tracking cookies? I'm genuinely asking. What kind of data does this even need tracking?

<comment><USER10> Same concern

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just to point out that human "smashing keyboard" is far from random.

Even if it weren't due to the keyboard's fixed layout (between two smashes), it's largely because of our non-random nature — a human being cannot reliably output random objects even in thought / speech. Don't ask me why (I don't think anyone knows or could prove it theoretically) but it's been verified countless times (war secrets help make such research important).

We're at best capable of pseudo-randomness mathematically. Some controversial neuroscience even places us far into the deterministic scope. A child is probably way more determined than an adult for that matter, due to a much simpler schema of reality, with 'weird obsessions' (e.g. it feels nice to smash the same place over and over again, our brain is quick to play games like that, such as walking on specific tiles to avoid the lava in the street).

I wouldn't trust most animals to output randomness. We have crypto packages suited for that purpose. ;-)

<comment><USER12> For anyone who wants an intuitive feel for how hard it is for humans to generate random bits, I would recommend playing this game:

[https://roadtolarissa.com/oracle/](https://roadtolarissa.com/oracle/)

<comment><USER13> Huh, I got 48%. Am I more random than random? :D

<comment><USER14> From the page:

> Knowing what the computer will guess, you can guarantee that it is always > wrong by picking the other direction. Doing the opposite of what a computer > tells you isn't quite free will though!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am inclined to not trust the story here. Too many shady things going on. The passwords just seem like they are generated algorithmically so the whole underlying premise seems to be bs. The images can be found on a stock image site, they are asking for money and it's all done in a very shady way where the password is being generated serverside making it inherently insecure as a generator.

Seems like someone is using the imagery of a cute child to make a few extra bucks, at best.

</comment><comment><USER14> Poor Max -- his dad's a developer, but he still has to work as a typist just to afford clean diapers, food, and toys. Everybody donate to this poor child's cause!

Joking aside, will I break this if I request too many characters? Does it loop after running out of Max's prior input? Is Max really just a script?

<comment><USER16> No i requested a 50 char length password and spammed the button and it kept giving me passwords.

What's likely is the kid's input was used as a seed (string to int?) and then put into a random number generator.

Kind of cute :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> My 2 year old would like to join as technical employee #1, but only if he gets forward vesting.

</comment><comment><USER18> From experience with my kids when they were toddlers, they would type what they saw. I was kind of freaked out when my son typed "WARNING". They watched VHS tapes or DVDs that began with that message.

</comment><comment><USER19> Why is this upvoted so high, this is purely a scam, and the passwords are not generated in the client.

</comment><comment><USER20> > A toddler acts with good faith

Questionable

<comment><USER21> As a parent of a threenager, In inclined to agree.

<comment> em-bee teenagers and toddlers are quite different. i can assure you that despite outside appearances, when your teenagers were toddlers they were acting in good faith, until they learned otherwise, from you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A toddler is basically a human that just booted. I'm not sure they have enough entropy to generate a good password. :-P

<comment><USER23> Well, conversely they have very little bias, since they have no previous experience - which could be useful?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> My toddler provides a whole security suite- she will set your critical files to readonly (by pulling all the keys of your keyboard), airgap your network (by playing with the power strip its connected to), and virus detection (by beginning to emit screams and snot as soon as she catches one) :)

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't know what they're doing with the site design but it's completely devoid of text for me even with my adblocker turned off. I thought that was part of the gimmick at first until I realized there is text displayed for a fraction of a second before it finishes loading.

</comment><comment><USER26> Won't the service have reduced entropy as time goes on?

In 2034, all the passwords will be "lol duh"

</comment><comment><USER27> This is obviously not real.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is cute, but I'd rather use the very secure password generated by experts at [https://mostsecure.pw/](https://mostsecure.pw/)

<comment><USER29> Hilarious, that site gives the same password every time I load the page. Also, that password has never been hacked according to haveibeenpwned.

<comment><USER30> Yes, I think that's the joke :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> After decades of academic research, true randomness finally achieved.

</comment><comment><USER32> Pretty entertaining. But if you want people to feel any more confident in your generator, you need to have entropy metrics.

I have a feeling toddlers might be worse than other entropy sources.

</comment><comment> code-is-code A human using a keyboard is one of the worst RNAs out there

</comment><comment><USER33> This is great. My daughter does this for me too:

[https://twitter.com/lukevers_/status/1181217729216425984](https://twitter.com/lukevers_/status/1181217729216425984) [https://twitter.com/lukevers_/status/1181217968287559680](https://twitter.com/lukevers_/status/1181217968287559680)

</comment><comment><USER34> Well done on the site, lovely style and funny idea.

</comment><comment><USER35> There is a reason why password generators are client side, not server side. The server can store all passwords it has ever provided.

</comment><comment><USER36> So, this is fun idea.

I have a toddler, so I identify. She constantly mashes my laptop keyboard, often deleting large blocks of code or typing gibberish into slack.

My biggest revelation here is how terrible the new MBP keyboard is. Just a bit of keyboard mashing and many keys are rendered useless. They require some gentle massaging to get back to a semi working state.

</comment><comment><USER37> Child labor, contacting Social Services.

<comment><USER23> My very first thought - I can't decide if I'm just being way too sensitive or if this is actually as wildly inappropriate as it seems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is absolutely not secure. If he let the kid type away for an hour and is selecting sub-strings from it, then all the passwords generated from this exist in a file that can be ex filtrated given enough requests to his server.

<comment><USER39> What if he let the kid type away for an hour, hashed that with SHA512, and used that as a seed for an RNG? Gigabytes of perfectly usable key material could be generated!

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Ah, the NSA. Those scamps.

</comment><comment><USER41> I tend to type guid in duckduckgo. [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Guid](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Guid)

Bad idea?

<comment><USER42> you can also just type password and it'll generate a password

<comment><USER43> You can actually just do this on any website. When making an account, just type password into the password field. The best part is you can do the exact same thing at login, so you never have to memorize the super secure password they generate.

<comment><USER44> You jest, but it seems an awful lot of people actually do do this...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I need a secure password, so, I am going to use a password that was generated in a secure server :) what a great idea :)

</comment><comment><USER46> hmmm interesting... was this site based on this post from '17? [https://artur.co/blog/07-30-17-preschooler-secure- password-t...](https://artur.co/blog/07-30-17-preschooler-secure-password- technique)

</comment><comment><USER47> Nice idea. But most times, the passwords can be difficult to memorize.

<comment><USER16> friendly advice - you should be using a password manager, not memorising passwords :) longer passwords are better

<comment><USER47> How then do I secure the password manager?

<comment><USER13> A single strong password you can memorize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Report for child labor!

</comment><comment><USER49> Is the name because only a toddler would use a password not generated on their own rig?

</comment><comment><USER50> still as vulnerable to a rubber ducky attack as ever

</comment><comment><USER51> i still really like dinopass.com</comment>


State of Indian Startup ecosystem - <AUTHOR> http://swapniltalekar.in/2012/12/28/state-of-indian-startup-ecosystem/

<comment><USER2> How about the cashflow side of things? Which startups are showing good traction on their revenue/profit?

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a very broad question. But there are several in mobile VAS who have done very well. Mobile advertising, who have revenues of several thousand crores and hugely profitable. Several B2B web services for SaaS companies- revenues in several tens of crores. Very few in offline retail but have revenue to the tune of several hundred crores. Ecommerce severely collapsing with big players having revenues of several thousand crores but none of them making any profit.</comment></comment>


How Much Experience Will Raise Your Tech Salary - <AUTHOR> http://insights.dice.com/2016/02/11/how-much-will-experience-increase-my-salary/ <comment><USER2> The fact that my salary goes up every time I switch jobs is actually incidental to the fact that I have been fleeing toxic project management practices for a decade...

Got too much to do? Add process. Got too little? Let's add s'more process. Complaining about process? That needs some process. Stand up, sit down, turn on your webcams and do a little dance.

Despite every tract for the past decade decrying this as the death nell of a healthy company culture and efficient engineering teams.</comment>


Rapidfuzz:  Experimentation around rapidcheck by combining it with libFuzzer - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/unapiedra/rapidfuzz <comment><USER2> Hey, that is really cool. Magic, even? Where does it break down? Meaning -- can I compose even awesomer types in my API and still have it figure out how to transform the input? Or does it strictly focus on containers and primitives?

For everyone else: skip to the example [1] to see the magic. "dut()" and indirectly "some_filter()" is the code under test. libFuzzer synthesizes Data+Size using your seed + its mutators + coverage-guided cleverness. But some of the tedium is transforming this into something your API expects. It's easy when you have something that expects a file as input.

Also, another semi-related approach to get fuzzing past the high level parse/lex frontend was to define a subset of your input grammar and use a serializer (e.g. protobuf) to make the small mutations (bitflips) more meaningful. clang-protobuf-fuzzer [2] .

[1] [https://github.com/unapiedra/rapidfuzz/blob/master/danluu_ex...](https://github.com/unapiedra/rapidfuzz/blob/master/danluu_example.cc)

[2] [https://2017llvmdevmtg.sched.com/event/CMjT/structure- aware-...](https://2017llvmdevmtg.sched.com/event/CMjT/structure-aware- fuzzing-for-clang-and-llvm-with-libprotobuf-mutator)</comment>


Best Business Books - <AUTHOR> http://personalmba.com/best-business-books/ <comment><USER2> What value is obtained from reading a business book that you cannot learn yourself? Not cocky, just curious.

<comment><USER3> There are plenty of things you can learn yourself, where books give you a head start, or give you some insights that might have taken you a while, and a lot of pain, to figure out yourself.

That said, many business books tend to suffer from a problem of having a fairly simple concept at heart, and needing to pad that out to make it into something book length. Thus, my site Squeezed Books, which summarizes them. I'd also like to foster discussion of some of the books in question, as I think there is something to be gained from the discussion and dissection of the ideas presented.

<comment><USER4> I agree that many business books have a good ten to twenty page article trapped inside, with the book length writing required as packaging for sale. Some books, e.g. Innovator's Dilemma, offer a detailed review of examples that help to reinforce the basic concepts (as distinct from a collection of personal anecdotes and reminiscences).

<comment><USER3> > packaging for sale.

... and for future consulting work, in some cases:-)

Yeah, with the good ones, it's not like the rest of it is just "garbage", and I enjoy reading them, but I think for people who just want to know what the 'big idea' is, you don't need the extras.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Solid list. I've read maybe 1/5th of those. There were some glaring omissions though:

-Strategy & Innovation: to leave off Clayton Christensen's "Innovator's Dilemma" and "Innovator's Solution" books is sacrilege -Psychology: Roger Dawson's "Power Negotiating" audio series is a must-listen for pysch and negotiating tactics -Business History/Ref: Founders at Work by YCombinator's own Jessica Livingston is a must-read for tech startup founders

There's digests on handful of others I recommend here: <http://www.scrollinondubs.com/notes>

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm surprised Jerry Kaplan's book isn't on this list. It's called "Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure." I'm also enjoying "High Stakes, No Prisoners," by Charles Ferguson, who invented FrontPage.

</comment><comment><USER7> This list recommends Zinsser for writing; for a hacker, I'd sub in John Williams "Style: Toward Clarity and Grace", a Richard Gabriel recommendation with a more systematic, almost engineer-y bent.

</comment><comment><USER8> I definitely don't trust a site that veils their affiliate link. (Load their SEO optimized 'book links' in lynx then control-c really quickly. You'll see a link that looks like ttp://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fdp%2F0814473431%2F&tag=personalmba-20&l )

This site was designed solely to garner commission on book sales. At least when someone like Jeff Atwood tries to weasel his way into affiliate sales, he pretends to have read the book and gives a critique.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is just their reading list. You should checkout the forum and blog. And yes, those are affiliate links:

        $ curl -I http://personalmba.com/books/cut-to-the-chase/
        HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
        Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2008 19:26:49 GMT
        Server: LiteSpeed
        Connection: Keep-Alive
        Keep-Alive: timeout=5, max=100
        Location: http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F %2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fdp%2F0385516207%2F&tag=personalmba-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325
        $

Considering how easy it is to get around the affiliate link (just search for the ISBN in a separate amazon/google window) OK, he should probably have put a little disclaimer somewhere about the affiliate program, but other than that, I don't really understand the "he's using affiliate links" drama. If you were to buy a book he suggested, why not let him be rewarded for suggesting it? You lose nothing, and he gets his work rewarded. If you disagree with this, just buy the book without following his link.</comment></comment>


Can anyone recommend a skilled senior Ruby on Rails developer for a project? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I have a start-up and we're looking for a skilled senior Ruby on Rails developer for a project - completely remote work (perhaps someone with 3yrs experience developing webapps with rails).
Can anyone recommend someone or a small team who are known to be very good and reliable and may have some availability?
You can find more info on our site at:
www.equibbly.com/shares/senior-ruby-on-rails-job
Thanks
Lance Soskin
president I can be reached at contact(at)) eQuibbly (dot))com www.eQuibbly.com <comment><AUTHOR> I looked at the site but didn't see any examples of your work. Where can I find your portfolio? Thanks Lance

</comment><comment><USER2> [http://RubyDeveloper.com/](http://RubyDeveloper.com/)</comment>


How to build a front page - <AUTHOR> http://unalone.tumblr.com/post/84937340/how-to-build-a-front-page

<comment><USER2> I don't think this is very coherent. It's basically the author's impression of what works and what doesn't. It isn't really substantiated.

A few examples:

he complains about snipd (first example) having too many colors on the frontpage, yet praises Basecamp (last example) even though they have even more colors on their front page.

Comparing Snipd's service to Google, and saying that Google does a better job of conveying information because they have less of it on their frontpage is a bit too easy. Snipd's service is substantially more complicated and unknown than Googles (seen from a user perspective, of course)

It's not a bad post by any means, it should just stress that these are opinions of the author, and not necessarily what has been proven to work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely! I jotted this up in an hour, thought people here might like it, and submitted it. Consider this to be the rambling opinion of a guy who likes looking at web sites.

 _he complains about snipd (first example) having too many colors on the frontpage, yet praises Basecamp (last example) even though they have even more colors on their front page._

The problem with Snipd isn't the colors. It's the fact that the colors don't contast well. There's faded-green next to vivid-green, cream with orange, and a lot of colors that don't fit well together. (I think when it was first posted here I said it reminded me of a liver spot, and the blue at the bottom felt like athlete's foot.) The Basecamp one, meanwhile, really pops. You get that really comforting dark-on white, there's lots of padding, and it all feels very cozy. (I particularly like that they contrast the red of the Basecamp page with the green of the sign-up button on top.) It's not perfect, but I thought nitpicking would detract from the message.

 _Comparing Snipd's service to Google, and saying that Google does a better job of conveying information because they have less of it on their frontpage is a bit too easy. Snipd's service is substantially more complicated and unknown than Googles (seen from a user perspective, of course)_

That's worth a completely different write-up: it's a big problem if people don't know why they should use your product. I don't get the point of clipping sites, so I don't know what design _would_ work well for one. On the other hand, there are a lot of search sites, and Google was the one that figured out exactly what they were supposed to do.

I was thinking about using Zooomr rather than Snipd, but Zooomr is so incredibly awful that I didn't want to use it in an article like this. Zooomr I can't help but laugh at. Snipd actually works very well: they just have an ugly front page.

<comment><USER2> Glad you replied - I wasn't quite sure about submitting the comment, since it might sound like a grumpy old man telling the kids to get off his lawn. I see you don't take it that way :-)

And for something jotted up in an hour it's pretty spectacular :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> His methodology is wrong. MySpace is very successful. It's a huge site, very profitable and used and loved by a great many people. So the frontpage obviously works.

The opinions reflected there are completely subjective, there is not even an attempt at any type of objective comparison between two patterns, to show why one pattern works and one does not.

"Could it be that Facebook is so popular because it constantly understates itself?"

It could be. It could also be exactly the opposite. There is no data, there is not even knowledge about why this approach was chosen.

If you want to analyse something, then take two items, one of which works and one of which does not. Point out the differences based on data. Then draw a conclusion.

<comment><AUTHOR> Forgive me; this response may be something of a rant.

 _His methodology is wrong. MySpace is very successful. It's a huge site, very profitable and used and loved by a great many people. So the frontpage obviously works._

It's successful because when it got created, it offered a music service that nobody else did. People joined to revolve around bands. I joined because friends had joined. That said, MySpace had a near-monopoly, and yet it was still beaten by a small college start-up. That's not the sign of a good web site. If MySpace had been better, Facebook wouldn't have had a chance.

You can succeed with a bad front page. That doesn't mean your front page is good. MySpace's is bad, and it's bad in a way that, when it's pointed it, is pretty obvious. (I would draw parallels to Windows, which is in many way very poor, but which is still successful. It doesn't mean that designers should take their cue from MySpace.)

 _There is no data, there is not even knowledge about why this approach was chosen._

That's a dumb way to look at it. Facebook's intent is obvious. If you want, you can look at the history of Facebook's redesigns and look at which central cues its designs revolve around. It started off with a login space and a large "sign up" button, which was replaced with a registration form.

That said, _you don't learn good design through analysis._ You learn good design by seeing designs that resonate with you. That's what I was trying to do: I wanted to call attention to the things that most stand out to me in the design of front pages.

 _If you want to analyse something, then take two items, one of which works and one of which does not. Point out the differences based on data. Then draw a conclusion._

Mark, we've had this exact discussion before, so I'll keep it brief this time. Analysis only goes so far. It's useful, at some points it's necessary, but you don't learn how to make good things by looking at numbers. You look at the things that stand out, and you talk about what's good and what's not good.

I'm a writer. I believe in design as art. We've argued this before: I recall we fought over the guy whose new year's resolution was to make a Youtube video that got 100,000 views, and you said that the number count mattered, and I said that you should focus on making a _good video_ rather than a popular one, and that good things always found their crowd. We have different views on this, and I doubt I'll change your mind because I haven't in the past.

 _The opinions reflected there are completely subjective, there is not even an attempt at any type of objective comparison between two patterns, to show why one pattern works and one does not._

Objective comparison only goes so far. Web designers spend too much time thinking about this, and it pisses me off because web designers are missing so much and yet they get so elitist about it. Look, at some point pure analytic technique falters, and you need to begin going from your gut. That's not to say there's no process: it's just that the process becomes a question of assessing things on your own rather than falling back on numbers.

Of course, I follow this because I'm a writer, and writing is traditionally the hardest art form to easily assess. You can't objectively compare, say, _Ulysses_ and _The Unnameable_. Ulysses is maximalist, The Unnameable is minimalist. One uses a hundred thousand different words, the other uses as few different words as possible and focuses on repetition. They're both excellent books. And it's possible, if you're really an anal prick, to create the exact set of rules that each book falls under, to say "There are two schools of design and this is the one and this is the other," but that ignores the fact that there are a million other books that defy those two schools.

The best design is unique. Compare two great things and they will always be radically different in most ways. You can underline the main fallacies (don't be cluttered, don't do such-and-such), but in the end you can't learn by being handed a list of don'ts.

So this post of mine is meant to be subjective. It's me saying "Here's what I've learned, because I've spent five years looking at every web page I go to and taking it apart internally and learning, and here are the things that helped me the most." For me, that helps more than something listing Fitt's Law and discussing things like that. There are excellent articles about those things. This is not meant to be an article like that. This works from the evocative, emotional, even _artistic_ view of design, the view that says "Here is how I, as a critic of front pages, view these front pages, and this is what I like and dislike about them all." In the end, the individual opinion is all I have to offer. I think that it's an opinion with a lot to offer, which is why I submitted it here, and apparently other people thought it was interesting. But we disagree, we _know_ we disagree, and neither of us has anything to gain from arguing about it further because each of us thinks the other is wrong.

<comment><USER4> _It's successful because when it got created, it offered a music service that nobody else did._

This is the safe-for-the-media version of why MySpace was successful. It's wrong. Pardon my crassness, but Myspace was successful because it had more sluts.

At the time, Friendster made it hard to sign up, impossible to view profiles unless you were a member, and it actively deleted semi-risque photos. Myspace did none of these things. Anyone could sign up, anyone could view profiles, and teenage women were encouraged to post tawdry photos of themselves. There were even loads of bogus profiles of babes in bikinis.

The music stuff was an interesting side note, but in the beginning it rarely even worked right and certainly wasn't why people joined the site. They joined because it was essentially a dating site without the social stigma of being a dating site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Huh! I didn't know what about Friendster. (I was pretty late onto the MySpace bandwagon: only joined in 2005.)

I would suspect that the people who remain on MySpace, however, do so for the bands. The sluttiness has moved its way towards Facebook, at least in my social circle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the author has done a good job of discussing how the functional elements of a good front page should work together to focus communication and create a favorable first impression.

However, there's a lot of art-design advice sprinkled in alongside the content-design advice that I think is of a fundamentally lower quality.

"Color variances should always be blatant rather than subtle."

This statement is SO wrong. Contrast can be very important in creating visual separation and hierarchy, but this is dangerously close to the implication that everything should be contrasty all the time. (Think about flourescent spandex from the 80s as an example of this idea brought to life.) Style needs harmony. Walk in to a banana republic and look at how all the subtle variations of earth tones can blend to make some very stylish outfits... visit barackobama.com or whitehouse.gov and notice how all the different hues of blue work together to create a great aesthetic.

Wish I had more time for this... There are some FANTASTIC ideas in here about content design; what companies should be trying to say to potential users... and what they're actually saying.

But take the color-related, art-design stuff with a grain of salt.

And please author, there's no reason to make the posts on your blog bold all the way through! Bold type is not designed to be legible in large blocks... it's hard to read... and anything you DO choose to specifically emphasize is lost in the visual noise of all the boldness.

<comment><AUTHOR> My blog's set in standard Helvetica. Nothing bold there, beyond the title. Do you have Helvetica installed? If so, is it actually Helvetica or a font using the name Helvetica? I've tested this theme on every major OS/browser.

 _This statement is SO wrong. Contrast can be very important in creating visual separation and hierarchy, but this is dangerously close to the implication that everything should be contrasty all the time. (Think about flourescent spandex from the 80s as an example of this idea brought to life.) Style needs harmony. Walk in to a banana republic and look at how all the subtle variations of earth tones can blend to make some very stylish outfits... visit barackobama.com or whitehouse.gov and notice how all the different hues of blue work together to create a great aesthetic._

There's probably a better way for me to say that, absolutely. It's not contrast per se, it's just making sure that your colors all look pretty. Gradient colors are very pretty when they're used well, as they are on all of Obama's page designs.

<comment><USER5> Oh wow. Your blog looks great in FF3. I initially read it from Chrome and for some reason everything came through in bold. My apologies for having little faith!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Updated the front-page: <http://snipd.com/>

Thoughts?

<comment><USER7> 1\. You should get rid of the newest link. It will be full of porn. Although, now, there is only one porn link.

2\. Your service is difficult to communicate. (At least, I did not immediately understand its purpose.) I think you should automatically play a short, silent, unobtrusive screencast that demonstrates the unique features of your product.

3\. On your front page, consider displaying only those users who have uploaded thumbnails. And you should probably pre-approve those images. Now, I'm looking at _durbin_ licking a sharp piece of class. It is kind of freaking me out.

All in all, I think you are a tasteful designer: well done.

Good luck.

<comment><USER8> Agree with only showing users who have thumbnails. This is what twitter does in its public feed, for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't think there's any way to improve snipd.com. The fundamental problem is that it's hard to understand what exactly snipd does. I'm a computer expert and I still don't understand it.

<comment><USER10> Maybe a video?

<comment><AUTHOR> Videos are poor solutions, because they require the user to follow at the video's pace, and pace is very hard to get right.

The more general problem is that most people don't know why clipping things is easier than just copying and pasting. (It's worse on the Mac, because cmd- shift-Y automatically clips to a sticky note, meaning the online solution isn't adding much at all.)</comment></comment></comment>


Put on Your Corbyn Face - <AUTHOR> https://gamesforthemany.com/corbynface/ <comment><AUTHOR> Web game using Emotion Classification by clmtrackr to score you based on how closely you can match the emotions in a picture of Jeremy Corbyn.</comment>


Ask HN: What are you doing with your TI MSP430 Launchpad? - <AUTHOR>

The development boards were announced in the spring and have I have not found a lot of examples of people building projects based on the kit.
So, HN:
1. Did you order a Launchpad?
2. Did you receive your Launchpad?
3. What have you done with it since? <comment><USER2> 1\. No, It looks like an interesting kit but I'm personally waiting for the new Netduino Plus to be released this month.</comment>


Show HN: An automatic scene switcher for Streamlabs OBS - <AUTHOR> https://obsswitcher.com <comment><USER2> Nothing against the developer of the product or even the product itself, but it seems that everything is going for the subscription model. What happened to just a once-off payment and free updates?</comment>


Why are so many twentysomethings having children before getting married? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/03/marry_in_your_twenties.html <comment><USER2> Well, you see Billy.... when a man loves a woman....

</comment><comment><USER3> People not believing in contraception, obviously.</comment>


"Good ideas have lonely childhoods" - <AUTHOR> http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/004670.html

<comment><USER2> I agree with most of the points presented, but I just cannot agree with point 2. In fact, the second point comes across as more like hey-you're-awesome mumbo jumbo that I would expect from motivational speakers.

 _"Good ideas alter the power balance in relationships, that is why good ideas are always initially resisted"_

I don't think a blanket statement like they are _always_ resisted is quite true. For example, a simple test would be:

2 people are caught in a house fire, person A says "lets get out of here"... person B would have to say "no, lets stay here" for this statement to be true.

Similarly ideas can be resisted because they are actually bad ideas.

If anything, I would say that people are more or less resistant to change, unless there are very obvious reasons for change.

<comment><USER3> It seems like you're over analyzing the point he was trying to make. I've seen his point to be true in the corporate environment time and time again. The problem with the standard org chart is that there is one person who is identified as "boss" and with that comes the implication that he generally knows best. If someone else has a different or contrarian idea it kind of goes against the established power structure and has a _potential_ to cause problems.

<comment><USER2> I'm not saying that it's not true a lot of the time as I do believe a lot of good ideas do meet initial resistance, by all means I think that people should be as creative as they can.

I just think that the one thing that we are all looking for is validation (especially in an idea rich environment such as this) and that such a blanket statement as "all good ideas are initially resisted" can be misleading, especially if someone misinterprets it as "my idea is being resisted, therefore it must be a good idea"...

As Iggy Pop once sang (please excuse the language, but it is probably appropriate)

 _if it looks like shit, sounds like shit, it must be shit_

But in all seriousness, I wasn't meant to overanalyze the point, I was just trying to provide commentary on why I don't think it is as black and white as was laid out in the post and it only applied to that single point.

Thanks for motivating me to explain it a little better, +1 for you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> conversely, do lonely children have good ideas?

<comment><USER5> Playing along with your question, I suggest no more so than popular children, however the popular children are exposed to pressure to discard the good ideas and have no incentive for acting on them.

Those few lonely children with good ideas, OTOH, have very little pressuring them to abandon their ideas. Who asking them to stop coding and go out to play?

<comment><USER6> interesting. I've noticed some famously creative people had a period of convalescence during their childhood. e.g. Descartes apparently formulated the idea of x-y (ie Cartesian) coordinates while bed-ridden.

I don't know how strong the correlation is (maybe lots of bedridden kids don't become creative? maybe lots of non-bedridden kids do become creative?), and there are other reasons for being lonely.

<comment><USER7> Well, if you're lonlely, bedridden or have any kind of impediments to living the "conventional" life, then I'd presume that solitary (and somewhat sedentary) fields like science and arts would be your outlet for creativity.

On the other hand, I have a friend who you wouldn't call creative in the conventional sense, but comes up with increasingly imaginative ways to pull women. Ultimately, it's what you devote your time to, whether it's by free will or some limitation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "The hard bit of having a "good idea" is not the invention of it, nor the selling of it to the end-user, but managing the myriad of politics and egos of the people who are supposedly on the same team as yourself."

Does this statement disturb you all like it frightens me?

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if its just the case that most of ideas are created by the "nerds" and the "geeks" who had lonenly childhoods because of their smarts and got picked on in school.

I really don't think you can create anything decent if you don't surround yourself by other smart people that'll make you think.

</comment><comment><USER10> I also think that many good people have lonely childhoods.

<comment><USER11> Though not many lonely people have good childhoods.</comment></comment>


White nationalists disillusioned with Trump – and some are joining the Yang Gang - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/white-supremacists-are-disillusioned-by-trump-and-joining-the-yang-gang-2019-3 <comment><AUTHOR> Title shortened from "White nationalists and the alt-right are disillusioned with Trump — and some are joining the Yang Gang" to fit.

There has been some discussion of Andrew Yang's candidacy for US President in 2020 here, because he's proposing a universal basic income and is getting a fair bit of support.

If the article is to be believed, he's also getting some support from disillusioned white nationalists, which is certainly unexpected since he is non-white and running as a Democrat.

That was so weird and unexpected it seemed worthy of a submission even though it is political.</comment>