No Man's Sky - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/12/no-mans-sky-18-quintillion-planets-hello-games <comment><USER2> Till now, I have seen about 10 different planets, from various trailers and presentations.

Clearly the game doesn't have 18*10^18 unique planets, since this is impossible. The problem this game has is, does it have enough variance in its planet generation, so that the average player will not notice a pattern.

The planets I have seen all looked mostly the same, with slightly different color schemes and animals made from generic pre-built parts. Unless the devs are only showing a couple of percent of the game, getting the 10 random samples from the game, all of which show a very similar planet is almost impossible.

<comment><USER3> I agree - the 2015 e3 demo video was a disappointment to me. The whole "Let's pick a random planet to fly to" sounds awesome, but then it's a big letdown when it looks remarkably similar to the ones in the other videos.

The problem is you can have an unimaginably large number of unique planets but yet they still all end up looking the same. Sure, the coastlines might vary or the colouring may be mildly different, but if the gameplay effect is negligible, then it's not an advantage.

I was (unrealistically) thinking that there would be planets with bustling cities, unique architecture, races, cultures and technologies.

<comment><USER4> Yeah I was thinking it would be something like Mass Effect with cities generated by overlaying algorithms. Something like: 1\. Generate buildings 2\. Generate transport links 3\. Generate mission objectives 4\. Refactor city layout to make objectives harder, and so on until a relatively stable (and fun to play!) environment is created.

They could even import races from nearby planets that have already been generated if it made sense that they would have colonised the new planet also.

Obviously those steps are very high-level and the genius would be in making it all actually work together... but yeh, just seems like the hype machine was in overdrive and really this is just Spore 1.1

<comment><USER5> There's no better way to spend a half hour online than to look at people's projects that generate cities. If they do a decent write-up along with some videos and demos, it really shows you just how difficult it can be for a simple fly-through 3D video. I can't imagine generating whole cities and cultures that you can interact with.

<comment><USER4> Yeah it can get complex, I even know someone who got a job because they showed off a city they created with procedural generation in an interview! But that was just layout of buildings and roads, the next part of bringing it to life with people I imagine is even more complicated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This game is getting so much hype I'm already seeing a Will Wright's Spore repeat.

<comment><USER7> Seriously. Spore got boring extremely quickly, and the playerbase died in a week. I suspect the same will happen to this game.

<comment><USER8> People saw promise and potential in Spore, but EA decided it wasn't in their best interest to make any extensions to core gameplay after the game's release. There were reportedly plans for true underwater exploration and new sets of parts, but none of those things ever came to be. Spore's modeling was fantastic, though, and allowed making unique creatures and vehicles more easily than any other editing program.

"If only," is all anyone ever says about Spore anymore. So if No Man's sky is the product, I don't care. If it's the beginning of some greater thing, however, I'm interested.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really hope that the tech in this game becomes merely the framework for more and more detailed 4x style games.

I personally would love a game where you choose a role, from tradepost manager to shipping magnate and the universe is large and complete enough to make this kind of role rewarding and interesting.

<comment><USER10> You mean like real life?

<comment><USER11> Woah, you mean I can sign up to be a shipping magnate moving goods across the universe in real life :)

<comment><USER12> In some small way, yes. [http://www.planetaryresources.com/careers/#workplace](http://www.planetaryresources.com/careers/#workplace)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> While the technical achievements are impressive, I am not convinced how "playable" this game will be in the end. Almost all the games in existence have at least 2 core elements: story and character purpose. I have not seen evidence of either in this game (no, "space exploration" is not exactly a purpose). A great addition to this graphical engine would be a scripting engine that would allow independent writers to create their own quests and method to submit them to the players.

<comment><USER4> The more I think about it the more impossible it seems that there could be ANY story in this game. Even if they managed to procedurally generate one planet + missions, the next generated planet would have to 'make sense' and fit into the story (if it's close by, then has it been taken over by the nearby planetary race? If they are a warrior race then do they use the planet as an outpost, with bases strategically placed around the planet? What does the planet add to the story mission-wise?)

And after all that, the 3rd generated planet would need to take into account the story of the other other 2 planets and so on and so on.. (even if the planets don't interact, the missions still need variety)

I agree with your scripting idea, to extend upon it: they release the game with an editor, then a designer would go in and use the editor to pre-generate a set of planets to their liking, and then they could layer story, missions, characters etc on top. Sort of like a build your own Mass Effect.

There could even be wormholes joining all the player created universes together! Oh the possibilities...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I. Can. Not. Wait.

I hope that at some point they add something like that virtual computer that Notch had added to 0x10c?

No matter what this is the first game that I've been excited about since I was a kid.

EDIT: Damn. The negativity in here is weird. What is it with gamer's that they just want to shit all over things? No gas planets...yeah they are real pricks for that. ??? What? A procedural universe is kind of a big deal. There's nothing that says that this thing can't be extended in the future as well.

The planets look the same? If you look at the screens from the PSX demo there was some really beautiful landscapes there. There is a palette that was chosen to reflect early sci-fi novel covers. That's actually really cool.

Remember, you can always go play another muddy-poo-brown cover based first person shooter. There will be 10 published by the time you finish reading this comment.

<comment><USER15> > Damn. The negativity in here is weird. What is it with gamer's that they > just want to shit all over things?

> Remember, you can always go play another muddy-poo-brown cover based first > person shooter. There will be 10 published by the time you finish reading > this comment.

<comment><USER14> I see what you did there. Point taken.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm excited for No Man's Sky, but I'm equally excited for Star Citizen and Dean Hall's new space sim. I think that exploring/colonizing/living in space is the perfect setting for new games on massive servers run with massive video cards. But I am skeptical that procedural generation is (for this genre) any better than a huge team churning out really expensive environments day after day.

I always love the technology behind procedural games, but I still ultimately prefer an environment and story crafted by human beings. Perhaps No Man's Sky will have sufficiently advanced algorithms as to give me the same variety and intensity of experience that hand-crafted game environments do, but as I said I remain skeptical.

</comment><comment><USER17> Y'all can play this game before it even comes out! Just search up "Noctis IV"

</comment><comment><USER18> In another interview they asked the developer if there would be gas planets in the game. He said no, every planet will be solid because otherwise players would be confused as to why they can't land on some planets.

So there you go, the target audience for this revolutionary game is people who are confused by the existence of gas planets.

<comment><USER19> Come on. It's a game, not a model of reality. The target audience is people who want to enjoy playing a game.

<comment><USER20> You could argue the same thing about having stars - I mean you can't land, so meh - why bother emulating reality and not just have something evenly lit?

Or space between planets, that's a bit meh and needed in a model of reality, how about just a drop-down menu to select where to teleport your ship to next?

I suspect the target audience is people who want to play an infinite universe space game, to whom little details like "An approximation of real life" tends to kind of be important. See: People in this thread, interested in the game, criticising it for the above.

<comment><USER19> I'm sure there'll be a mode that makes it take decades or centuries to get from one star to another. For those who need a truly authentic experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> better known as 'no gameplay'

<comment><USER22> How do you know that - have you played it?

<comment><USER8> It may not be "no gameplay," but it adheres to a very loose interpretation of "gaming." Whatever rules exist in the game basically only serve to aid the sense of progression as people continue to explore. Losing happens only if you explore in a manner that isn't careful, and winning happens when you've explored (carefully) to the center of the universe. [1]

The game isn't supposed to be a game for game's sake, in other words; it's intended to just be an adventure. "Winning" and "losing" are a means towards that end.

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Man%27s_Sky#Gameplay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Man%27s_Sky#Gameplay)

<comment><USER22> Same as it ever was. Anyone who's been paying attention since the beginning of video games knows that game play is what you make of it .. "It's not a very good game" has been said of many stellar successes in this realm, where the position usually changes after people have actually, you know .. played .. with something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wish this was being developed in a more open manner, with a beta program. I want a game with a community, and ecosystem rather than one persons singular vision.

<comment><USER24> Conversely, I feel that some of my most beloved games have come from exactly the sort of genesis you seem to reject.</comment></comment>


Training AI to recognize nudity is more difficult than you think - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/30/18202474/tumblr-porn-ai-nudity-artificial-intelligence-machine-learning <comment><USER2> Tumblr flagged 11 of my images yesterday. In fairness, 10 of them were various photos of my legs/ankles/knees in various states of insect/cycle-induced disrepair and I can't fault the bot for picking up on "large areas of flesh colour" as a trigger.

The 11th, however, was a shot of my rucksack on a Premier Inn bed.

(All of them were automatically reinstated the instant I hit the appeal button. Which makes me wonder why they were flagged if an appeal triggers an instant reinstatement because clearly no human looked at that appeal...)</comment>


WeChat daily active users top 768M - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/wechat-daily-active-users-top-768-million/ <comment><USER2> serious question: how invasive is the wechat app compared to its "western" competitors?</comment>


Bump Shares Its Phone Tapping, Data Swapping Technology With A New API - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/22/bump-api/ <comment><AUTHOR> Imagine Bump as the fastest way to transfer money within friends or somebody...

e.x: Hey buddy you should give me 10 bucks from yesterday!

Oh yes! let's bump.

<comment><USER2> I can't wait for this to be true. Future, get here faster!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think this is a really cool idea. I think of it every time I use IrDA to beam small files back and forth. But IrDA is so 10 years ago...

How does it work? Ad-hoc wifi connection between the phones, or does it actually send the data through the cloud?

<comment><USER4> as i understand it, it uses the timing of the bump and location data to match the phones, then the transfer of data is done through the cloud

<comment><USER5> yes, and we are network agnostic so a user on wifi will match a user on the cellular network.

<comment><USER6> Doesn't location data require GPS which takes time to acquire data and need satellite visibility? What happens if I bump in a basement?

<comment><USER5> Location can come from cell tower triangulation, scanned wifi or GPS. There are several ways we match people without location, but the vast majority are currently matched with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Shameless plug: if you think this is cool come work with us! <http://bu.mp/jobs.html> There are even more exciting things on the horizon (well we think so at least).</comment>


Developing with Docker at 500px, Part One - <AUTHOR> http://developers.500px.com/2015/09/10/developing-with-docker-at-500px-pt1.html <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm the author. If you have any questions please feel free to ask, I'll be checking in periodically.</comment>


Apple makes 23 different dongles – and it would cost you $857 to buy them all - <AUTHOR> http://uk.businessinsider.com/apple-dongles-2017-8?international=true&r=UK&IR=T <comment><USER2> You'd never need all of these though, would you? There is a lot of overlap between the dongles that unless you had a lot of devices you wouldn't require. For example I can't see anyone buying an HDMI to DVI + a Lightning to VGA + a Mini Displayport to DVI. Feels a little bit like saying ford make xx models of car & it would cost you £1 million to buy them all.

<comment><USER3> Title is very silly, just trying to jump on the dongle hate train. I don't have or own any dongles despite my many Apple devices (technically I have one for my iPhone 7 with headphones, but I have air pods if I ever need headphones). I think Apple knows most consumers don't need dongles at all.

<comment><USER4> I actually have most of these because I tend to buy new Apple equipment, and try to connect it to old non-apple equipment.

Something like a lightning to VGA adapter is a must have in my household.

<comment><USER5> Why? What about your previous non-dongle needing equipment was so inferior you replaced it for a new Mac and yet you didn't replace the VGA monitor? Some kind of exceedingly rare edge case?

<comment><USER6> while VGA is getting quite old, generally speaking a monitor will outlive several computers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Personally, I would prefer the option for 23 dongles (most of which I will never use, or buy) to a multitude of ports on my laptop (most of which I will never use). The first seems like it provides me options, the second seems like it adds unnecessary failure points and openings to a delicate machine.

<comment> GuB-42 You can think of extra ports as failure points but you can also think of them as redundancy. Having a single port to connect everything causes a lot of wear on a single point of failure.

<comment><USER8> That's why there are 4 USB-C/TB3 ports on the new MacBook Pros (2 on the cheapest one). The new iMac only has 2 USB-C/TB3 ports, but also retains all the legacy ones.

So the only issue is with the 12" MacBook and its single USB-C port. Yep, that's a point of failure, but for it's intended users it's alright. On previous laptops you'd be screwed if you lost your AC adapter port anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Note that for every single one of those dongles, there are a handful of manufacturers that offer the same quality for half the price. It's not an issue that they have such a large offering for connectivity, it's that their items are overpriced, I mean $30 for a Lightning to 30-pin adapter, what a racket.

</comment><comment><USER10> This reminds me of the dongle hell of the 90's; Apple had done so well once Jobs got back onboard; it was at the end of his tenure that MDP took over, and then Tbolt, that brought us right back into the nickel and diming, "we have a $30-80 solution for your problem."

</comment><comment><USER11> First-world problems

</comment><comment><USER12> This title is ridiculous. I'm not even going to click on it.</comment>


What Exactly is Multiplication? - <AUTHOR> http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_01_11.html

<comment><USER2> Devlin has now written 4 (or 5?) columns trying to figure out what multiplication means, and fighting with his readers over it, including arguing at one point that he is not able to get his point across because he is British and his readers are Americans.

Here's my understanding of what the confusion is. Normally, we define multiplication at several levels: (i) define multiplication on integers using e.g. Peano arithmetic, then (ii) define it on rational numbers using the definition of multiplication on integers, (iii) then on reals numbers, complex numbers and so on.

The important point to note is that each of these operations or binary functions are distinct functions because the domain of operations are different. The confusion arises because the operator symbol and the name have been overloaded for these different functions. At no point in his discussion does Devlin seem to make this distinction, that multiplication means different things for different domains.

The further issue is that certain common properties of these operations have been abstracted out to form the concept of a group operation, and this is the perspective that Devlin hangs on to, somehow seeming to think that the multiplication operation for integers, rationals, reals etc. follows from this group-theoretic conception, rather than the other way round.

Which I find strange, considering that he is a mathematician. Perhaps I am misunderstanding his position, but that's not for lack of effort.</comment>


It all began with a strange email - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/it-all-began-with-a-strange-email/ <comment><USER2> I worked at CCP when they hired Eyjólfur. He came in without really knowing a lot about the game world and made it his first job to learn as much as he could about how the world actually worked.

Given that I was a foreigner who was working and living in Iceland, I didn't have much of an evening social life. I was also one of the relatively few employees (sadly) that were really active in the game in the advanced levels of play -- 0.0, empire wars, etc.

Eyjólfur spent a bunch of evenings sitting with me while I played internet spaceships. He asked tons of questions and really got to learn the universe, or at least my corner of it. It was really interesting to work with him and hear him talk about his thoughts as he was putting them together.

CCP used to publish the Quarterly Economic Newsletter, like this:

<http://cdn1.eveonline.com/community/QEN/QEN_Q3-2010.pdf>

They've since stopped doing that, but you can see from that example that it used to be a fantastic resource. If you wanted to know the nitty-gritty details about the universe of EVE Online, the QEN was hard to beat.

<comment><USER3> [edit: reposted as top-level comment; I apologize for the repetition]

CCP's economist's reports are the real deal. The EVE game economy is I dare say more developed and complex than most other games' - it has many kinds of input factors and stages of production, and many of the production facilities/resources are player-controlled and their fate determines on political maneuvering, war and sabotage between player corporations (guilds). The price of most items in EVE (ships, weapons, components, structures) is determined by the state of production and speculation in the economy, so CCP has to consider the economic impact of nearly every single change they make to the game world.

If any of you folks are interested in reading about a truly fascinating, active digital economy, you have to read the EVE economic reports and other investigations of EVE. It's like reading about mining, manufacturing and stock markets - against a background of eternal war between corporations - in far- future space.

edit: links to additional content \----- <http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/eve- online/855380p1.html>

>>> EVE Online was developed to have a very dynamic economy from the very beginning. It was decided that "time" would be treated as a valuable player resource: for that reason, raw materials were spread all over the galaxy map, which takes hours to traverse. This created regional pricing. Interestingly, there were no trade hubs built into the core game design -- players gradually settled into certain areas and made their own pockets of population where trade thrived.

>>> Gudmundsson had some fun examples of how intelligent virtual economies can be. He showed a graph displaying the prices of a mineral in the game known as Zydrine. Zydrine is hard to find in the EVE universe, but players had discovered that killing a certain class of drone often leaves behind Zydrine in the wreckage. This hole in the market led to lots of drone-farming, and subsequently the price started to drop. Drastically.

The developers decided to tweak the drop rate and this change rolled out onto the test server, unannounced, and mixed in with all sorts of other tweaks. Still, clever players noticed the change. Word got out. And suddenly, even though nothing had yet been done on the live server, prices for Zydrine spiked dramatically. Markets make for great predictors of future events!

\----

[http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/06/21/real-economist- tak...](http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/06/21/real-economist-takes- lessons-from-virtual-world/)

>>> One of his team's first big findings is somewhat sensitive. Confirming decades of gender research by economists, sociologists and anthropologists, Mr. Turpeinen's group found that the same biases that have historically favored men in the real world exist in a virtual economy. Their research demonstrates that both women subscribers and female avatar characters operated by male subscribers in EVE are biased toward a slightly lower chance of success in competition with their male counterparts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A bit of a background: Varoufakis is something of a celebrity in Greece for being one of the first and the most vocal economists to speak out against the European strategy for resolving the Greek sovereign debt crisis. His predictions have proven to be tragically spot on so far, although it remains to be seen whether his proposal for renegotiating the European bailouts, a proposal that the left-wing SYRIZA political party (which has about 50% chance of winning in the Sunday elections and has allegedly asked Varoufakis to be its economic advisor) has stood behind, is actually a realistic one. He fled to the US and Valve after the doctoral program in Economics he had built in the University of Athens was dismantled during the crisis and after he started receiving death threats by people who weren't particularly thrilled with his opinions.

<comment><USER5> You seem to know a little bit about this gentleman than I (and the rest of HN probably) know, could you tell us more about his (correct) predictions ?

<comment><USER6> I have attended one lecture-seminar-debate for economists. He was a spokesman and his ideas can be summarized in 2010 here [1].

His work regarding european crisis [2]

[1]:[http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2010/12/17/the-modest-proposal- in-...](http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2010/12/17/the-modest-proposal- in-600-words/) [2]:<http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/euro-crisis/>

<comment><USER5> A little late, but thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is truly fascinating.

I remember hearing about virtual economies where money can be injected at any time through gold mining, etc, and that they were inherently unstable. Once you got the gold farming schemes that sold gold on e-bay, it created massive hyperinflation.

And it totally made sense that hyperinflation would occur since the creation of virtual gold was limitless and effortless, so the gold farmers didn't care how much gold they sold it for as long as they got real money. That rendered the price of gold worthless, and it drove up the prices of virtual goods across the board.

I would love to see how these problems are tackled in the virtual world.

<comment><USER8> Many games add "Gold sinks" to tackle this. Just ways for players to use gold that completely removes it from the economy. I believe the trick of this is to scale it with the amount of gold in the system.

Complete conjecture, but I suspect this is related to things like the increased price to craft gems in Diablo II (bigger gems are more expensive) which was a stark contract to Diablo 2's simple method of "3 small gems make a big gem".

Diablo 2 felt like it had an economy that happened almost by accident whereas DiabloIII feels like they put a lot of effort into the economy and trying to have enough ways to remove gold from the economy.

<comment><USER9> Adding to gold sinks -

WoW I think had some of the most visible impacts in terms of gold sinks (some I am sure were pioneered by other games and MMOs)

They brought about the concepts of vanity items, which were absurdly expensive and went from there.

Whats even more interesting is seeing the progression and evolution of these economies.

Wow 1.0 auction houses and others barely had the concepts of gold sinks, nor any of the finer tuned economic catches that blizzard introduced by the time it reached its 3rd expansion - Wrath of the Lich King.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Four years ago one of my first startup ideas I pursued was setting up an arbitrage between virtual economies. I believed then (and still believe) that it is a huge chunk of the future. Everything that is tangible now will become software and intangible in the future. That means the virtual economy is set to eclipse the current one.

I spoke with some somewhat famous startup-type people; several I met on HN. None of them seemed interested in my pitch (I was looking for a cofounder). One basically said "I've already got my FU money. This just doesn't excite me that much."

I'm looking for some cool things to happen in this space over the next decade. When I was kicking this around we had all sorts of things we wanted to try. It'll be interesting to see if any of them come to fruition. One of the key questions in this space is whether it's even possible to manage virtual economies as this guy wants to do, or it there's always some level of abstraction that's remains out of reach. My money says the thrill of being able to finally experiment will be short-lived. Odds are each economy we create with gaming rules will simply be a small subset of a much larger informal economy. Cool stuff.

<comment><USER11> Interesting. I have some questions. (If you don't mind answering.)

> Everything that is tangible now will become software and intangible in the > future.

When you say this what exactly do you have in mind? Virtual reality? Living substances made through bio-hacking?

> or it there's always some level of abstraction that's remains out of reach.

What sort of abstraction do you feel would be prohibitive in this environment?

> That means the virtual economy is set to eclipse the current one.

In what capacity? Like bitcoin, or like for the win[0]?

[0]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_the_win>

Thanks in advance.

<comment><USER10> Manufacturing of tangible goods will become a commodity as 3-D printing becomes mainstream. In addition, many services that were verbally or physically contracted will be handled completely in virtual reality. Think home robots cutting hair, or auto-drive cars.

And as you point out, that's not even touching bio-hacking, which is also converging to digital/created lifeforms.

Call me cynical, but this article struck me as nerd candy. It's a totally- awesome idea: we finally get to really measure and experiment with economies! But in my research several years ago I was already uncovering hundreds of millions of dollars in a virtual goods black-market. People will take a character of yours and spend all of their time leveling him up and getting lots of goodies. Then you log in and take over. You pay them through some back channel. Or you leave an item where somebody else can pick it up, etc. No matter how you design a virtual world, there are plenty of ways to make economic transactions outside the walls. The illusion that you somehow have a god-like view and can see and observe everything of important is just that, an illusion. But I'm willing to wait a few decades for the economists to figure that one out :)

The virtual economy will merge along multiple different lines. I don't think there's any one answer here. There's no reason your WoW character can't be traded for BitCoin and used as a downpayment on a VR piece of real-estate that you then later sell at a profit for options on a futures market in some rare item coming out in a game next year. Thinking in a linear fashion can really handicap the possible solution sets out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Among virtual economies, EVE Online's economy is the real deal. The EVE game economy is I dare say more developed and complex than nearly any other games' - it has many kinds of input factors and stages of production, and many of the production facilities/resources are player-controlled and their fate determines on political maneuvering, war and sabotage between player corporations (guilds). The price of most items in EVE (ships, weapons, components, structures) is determined by the state of production and speculation in the economy, so CCP has to consider the economic impact of nearly every single change they make to the game world. (They hired their in- house economist in 2008 IIRC.)

If any of you folks are interested in reading about a truly fascinating, active digital economy, you have to read the EVE economic reports and other investigations of EVE. It's like reading about mining, manufacturing and stock markets - against a background of eternal war between corporations - in far- future space.

EVE Quarterly Economic News, by CCP's economist Eyjólfur Guðmundsson (link courtesy of xb95): <http://cdn1.eveonline.com/community/QEN/QEN_Q3-2010.pdf>

edit: links to additional content ----- <http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/eve- online/855380p1.html>

>>> EVE Online was developed to have a very dynamic economy from the very beginning. It was decided that "time" would be treated as a valuable player resource: for that reason, raw materials were spread all over the galaxy map, which takes hours to traverse. This created regional pricing. Interestingly, there were no trade hubs built into the core game design -- players gradually settled into certain areas and made their own pockets of population where trade thrived.

>>> Gudmundsson had some fun examples of how intelligent virtual economies can be. He showed a graph displaying the prices of a mineral in the game known as Zydrine. Zydrine is hard to find in the EVE universe, but players had discovered that killing a certain class of drone often leaves behind Zydrine in the wreckage. This hole in the market led to lots of drone-farming, and subsequently the price started to drop. Drastically.

The developers decided to tweak the drop rate and this change rolled out onto the test server, unannounced, and mixed in with all sorts of other tweaks. Still, clever players noticed the change. Word got out. And suddenly, even though nothing had yet been done on the live server, prices for Zydrine spiked dramatically. Markets make for great predictors of future events!

\----

[http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/06/21/real-economist- tak...](http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/06/21/real-economist-tak..).

>>> One of his team's first big findings is somewhat sensitive. Confirming decades of gender research by economists, sociologists and anthropologists, Mr. Turpeinen's group found that the same biases that have historically favored men in the real world exist in a virtual economy. Their research demonstrates that both women subscribers and female avatar characters operated by male subscribers in EVE are biased toward a slightly lower chance of success in competition with their male counterparts.

<comment><USER12> Has anyone here _played_ EVE online? I keep hearing about how intricate and rich it is, but I've never met anyone who played it. Is the complexity interesting? Or is it 'time-sink' complexity in the vein of Diablo 3 -- as in rather mindless optima-seeking?

<comment><USER2> I've played off and on since 2003. The corporation I'm part of now has built an ERP and manages a trillion ISK (which at the legal rate is $35,000 USD in assets).

We have production facilities -- several of them. We have distribution facilities. Transportation units (local and long-haul). We have combat pilots to protect the transportation. And we have the final delivery points where we actually sell goods -- both retail (on the market) and bulk (contracts to buyers).

To manage all of this, we have built an ERP system. It tracks our inputs, outputs, and processes. It makes procurement decisions (build vs. buy) and submits orders to the various groups of people who actually make things happen -- the producers, researchers, haulers, marketers, etc. The game is very manual on that front, but we use an automated system to actually submit very small, easy to understand orders that people can do in a few minutes usually. In aggregate, it powers a rather complicated machine.

As an example... let's say somebody places an order for 10 Widgets out in the edge of space. We live out near the edge -- actually, look at this map:

<http://go-dl1.eve-files.com/media/corp/Verite/influence.png>

That's the sovereignty map. It's updated daily. My alliance is Intrepid Crossing in the top right in green. That's 0.0 space (null-security aka no police and lawless -- players own and control everything). Now, let's go through that example of a user ordering 10 widgets.

* Delivery order is submitted if we have it in stock. If so, someone will deliver it via contract. Done. * If not in stock, start the decision tree for this item. * Do we have this in stock in production/stock facilities? If so, submit a transportation order. When it gets transported, the system detects this and submits a delivery order. * If we don't have it in stock, check the market prices for the goods required to build this item as well as the cost to purchase it from a reseller. * If it's cheaper to buy, we submit an order to our procurement team. (Automatic, still.) Once they procure it, the order goes to transportation and then finally delivery. * If it needs building, we do another process of seeing if we have what we need -- or if we have to buy minerals, blueprints, etc. * If we had to buy things, those orders are submitted to procurement and transportation. * If we have it (or the minerals arrive), the production order is submitted. * When we finally have the good, then transportation and delivery happen.

The entire thing is mostly automatic. We carry out the whims of this machine and we supply (rather efficiently) a pretty large alliance. It's a really impressive system.

Yeah, it's a video game. Sort of.

I love it.

And I haven't even touched on the politics, wars, and everything else. It's a beautiful, wonderful, maddening thing.

<comment><USER13> I think it would be interesting to build a game like EVE which maps the management of spaceships and cargo to the management of real world businesses like a toilet seat manufacturer in Iowa.

While users of the game are creating distribution networks and building custom ERP solutions they would really be managing businesses (without their direct knowledge). If you were really successful in the game then you would find yourself managing the logistics of a much larger real world company.

I guess the challenge would be to create game mechanics that mapped in a way to real world business constraints that made sense.

<comment><USER14> Sounds a lot like Ender's Game to me, except you are tricked into managing a business instead of wiping out an alien species.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If anyone from valve is listening, would really appreciate it if you added commenting support to your blog, I am looking forward to this series of articles, it is a very interesting and unique space.

<comment><USER16> Have you ever read the WoW forums (or any other official game forum)? The signal to noise ratio is absolute crap. The first few pages would be people saying "first!" and it goes downhill & off-topic from there. We're talking about a site with 10M subscribers, all of them focused on a single piece of official correspondence, wanting their chance to get attention.

It would be absolutely useless & provide zero opportunity for intelligent dialog. If anyone from Valve is listening and wants to open discussion, they would do better to interact with 'higher quality' communities directly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Intensely interesting. I'm looking forward to more blog entries. Though not an economist, I've always lamented the way econometrics was starved of opportunities, and the way competing ideas could both thrive with no real hope of resolution.

</comment><comment><USER18> I guess I would be interested in a truly economics oriented game that modeled nations without it being about wars, raids, guilds, spells etc. Not sure if something like that exists though.

<comment><USER19> A Tale in the Desert is probably the closest I know of.

Its player base is limited compared to most MMOs (around 1000-2000ish, last I looked), but it's a combat free game centered around economic production.

It's also a bit unusual in that it has no in game currency. The last time I played (a bit more than 5 years ago), it was largely a barter economy. However, there was a player run item exchange whose credit functioned as a defacto currency.

I have no idea what the current state of the game is, but if you're curious about a non-combat economic MMO, it's worth taking a look at.

<comment><USER20> That's a good description of the current state of the game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _an economy where we do not need statistics since we have all the data!_

I simultaneously feel his elation and am mystified. If you have such a quantity of data that you must relate to it via statistics, how is that better than only having the statistics? Is it because you can define and calculate your own creative statistics, or...?

<comment><USER3> Off the top of my head: you no longer need to sample to obtain your statistics, and you can obtain _good_ statistics on virtually everything and every sub-component of the economy, _sliced every which way, as many times as you like_ \-- which is much harder in the real world. You can't just go out and gather information on sales of all red, oblong widgets in shops owned by couples aged 50-60 with one dog and one cat -- but you can in a game economy.

Basically it's a huge data laboratory where you are able to record every transaction in the world, and work from there. That's massively useful to economists, because they can now test a far wider range of hypotheses and, furthermore, eliminate them much more quickly.

<comment><USER22> Even the real data should contain noise, compared to a true hypothesis. For example, you could predict that a certain (for the purpose of the example, small) percentage of all players will buy a certain ship. But many of them just stop playing by chance, then your prediction fails even if the underlying theory is correct. [1] I believe the main advantage is, that you can get rid of sampling bias. So you can look at the entire economy, not only on the part which is willing to answer a poll. For a nice real world example see [2].

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_negatives#Type_I_error>

[2] [http://neuroanthropology.net/2010/07/10/we-agree-its- weird-b...](http://neuroanthropology.net/2010/07/10/we-agree-its-weird-but-is- it-weird-enough/)

<comment><USER23> > _"But many of them just stop playing by chance"_

I suspect this will be one of the significant weaknesses in trying to translate anything learned in a game economy into real economies. You have much better data in a game economy, but people do grow bored or decide they're just not good enough, and move on. Or people decide they've taken a stupid path and reset their account, and build from scratch. In real life, most people try to keep living even if they're at the bottom end of the economy and don't have the means to change that. This strikes me as a fundamental difference between the virtual and the real.

<comment><USER22> Great, I learn by being misunderstood :) I did think about people who stop playing because of outside events, like a new season of "Game of thrones" or a girl, not about ingame events.

However, there is of course a fundamental bias in game economies. Another example would be, that in game economies people use unethical tactics, like simply killing competition. ( I did not hear of Bing-hordes raiding the Google HQ.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Fascinating read, just like many of the other Valve blogs.

Though, I do wish this guy could explain why real-world money Steam games in the US are often half the price of those in Australia/Europe.

<comment><USER25> Advertised prices in $ exclude sales tax, because for most states it isn't levied on digital downloads.

However, VAT in EU countries (don't know about Australia) is included in the price. This causes a fairly substantial discrepancy, as VAT can be rather high (in the UK, 20%). Other discrepancies can usually be put down to exchange rate fluctuations, which with the recent financial issues in Europe have been somewhat unstable.

<comment><USER26> Regarding Australia, our GST is a flat 10%, and the AUD is near parity with the USD (and has been above parity for most of the last 12 months). The price discrepancy is far greater than it should be if those were the only factors.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, an independant regulatory body in Australia that oversees the Trade Practices Act (among other things), is in the process of inquiring into the so-called "Australia Tax" to find out why companies like Apple and Valve charge far more for software sold in Australia than in other countries despite the low true cost difference.

<comment><USER27> The ACCC is pissing in the wind. It's just a matter of geographic price segmentation to maximise revenue. End of story.

Also, end of legal challenge:

* there's no violation of free trade agreements, which are about governments dropping barriers like tariffs and quotas and confer neither rights to individuals nor obligations on businesses, and

* there's no violation of individual rights, because country-of-residence is not a protected class, unlike gender/orientation/skin colour/race/disability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> An economist finally admits it why they fail so much.

"let's face it: Econometrics is a travesty! While its heavy reliance on statistics often confuses us into believing that it is a form of applied statistics, in reality it resembles computerized astrology"

"the reason for this unavoidable failure? None other than our inability to run experiments on a macroeconomy"

The theories are never tested. They just get implemented. A thousand other things are happening at the same time and its impossible to get anything approaching the clarity of a double blind experiment. But the adherents act as if they've got exactly that.

<comment><USER29> > _"An economist finally admits it why they fail so much."_

What do you mean by "so much"? Because they can't accurately, regularly predict the future?

I think you'll find that, in reality, economists know their fallibility and limitations. It's the proletariat that doesn't understand the under-pinnings and assume economists should be 100% accurate when they make predictions, and are upset when they are not.

<comment><USER28> We're not in the current crisis because the people expect 100% accuracy from economists. Its that economists have bad theories.

Most economists fail to offer theories that accurately describe reality. Keynesian is the current disaster.

And politicians can only pick from the available theories and tend to pick the most shortsighted of policies, as they are trying to get re-elected.

Its not that a bunch of unforeseen events have occurred. Its that theories being followed are bad. They ignore many very real things. And the consequences that most economists have been denying all along are happening.

For example, they analyze the multiplier effect government spending but ignore the effects of removing those resources from other parts of the economy. They don't analyze what happens where the resources are being taken away. But those resources are real things that people no longer have and cannot use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Which two economies were being merged?

<comment><USER31> I'm guessing TF2 and Dota 2?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Looking forward to these posts. I've remember being completely fascinated by Diablo 2's virtual economy, and saddened that I could find so little articles about it.

<comment><USER33> I went to GDC this year and saw a talk by a PHD Economist who does work on video game economies and releases reports about them. It was one of the coolest talks I attended, and I spoke with him afterwards. In his talk he mentioned Habbo Hotel a lot and spoke about a few other economies and how they came to settle on some sort of currency. I just had to bring up how I first noticed a form of virtual currency in Diablo 2 as he didn't seem to mention it. I do recall that SOJ's were like the defacto unit of pricing other items. Apparently he had actually never heard about that, which surprised me greatly (perhaps because Diablo 2 was so huge, and because it was one of the only examples I personally had). Here's hoping he looks into it and writes a report about it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> What games does Valve have that have virtual economies?

<comment><USER35> Team Fortress 2 and DOTA 2 are the ones I know of.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Fortress_2#Free-to-play>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dota_2#Free-to-play>

<comment><USER36> One can exchange items, but not sell them. There is no money account in TF2. So I don't see any relation with a real life economy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Complete tangent, but I noticed that on Yanis Varoufakis' blog, the current entry is his interview with Max Keiser.

[http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2012/06/15/ponzi-austerity- intervi...](http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2012/06/15/ponzi-austerity-interviewed- on-the-keiser-report/)

What's the connection? Max Keiser sounds exactly like the defective turrets from _Portal 2_. Coincidence?!

</comment><comment><USER38> An interesting resonance with Charls Stross's Halting State.

</comment><comment><USER39> For the sake of Pete, someone remove the parens from this man's keyboard.

</comment><comment><USER40> Reminds me of Neal Stephenson's Reamde and the T'Rain geology

</comment><comment><USER41> >the notion that a computer game company has surreptitiously and quite spontaneously created virtual economies that it comprehends as 'economies' (which deserve study and regulation) was enough to write back instantly

Does this man believe we should have legal regulation of game economies? Oh wow.

<comment><USER42> Do you believe we shouldn't?

Assume an economy can be sized... so it's a $100m economy, or a trillion-$ economy, etc.

Connecting economies together obviously causes them to impact each other. So long as games are connected just to the US economy, and it is much, much larger than any game economy, the impact on the "real" economy is nil.

What about a much smaller real economy? Connect an economy the size of Eve or WoW to one the size of Zimbabwe. Suddenly, events in the game can have very real macro-economic effects on the "real economy". For example, uncontrolled creation of "wealth tokens" can lead to inflation, and contaminate the real world just in the same way as currency fluctuations impact the real world.

Banks can create money, and they are regulated. If virtual economies can create money on a scale large enough to disrupt the real economy, shouldn't they be regulated too?

I'm not saying the answer is obviously one way or the other, but to dismiss the question with an "Oh wow" seems very short-sighted.

<comment><USER43> That's a good point. I hadn't really thought about virtual economies like WoW or Eve as similar to the Fed in that they can essentially print money.

<comment><USER20> Only for their given domain. Blizzard and CCP are free to make as much gold and ISK as they want (and they do; it's a faucet-drain economy, and the faucet does not get shut off). But the quantity and buying power of said currencies change its value in relation to real world money.

So saying they can print money is not really true; they can control the value of a particular good that isn't intended to be a good.

<comment><USER42> But if their virtual economy is stabler than a real world economy, this changes, right? I'd rather own ISK than Zimbabwean dollars. Even if it's not strictly stabler, the ISK reflect a certain amount of wealth that's retained in the virtual economy.

Taking another contrived example to make the point obvious, if Eve players basically controlled the equivalent of a trillion dollars, and they all decided to shift half of it to dollars (e.g. Because CCP has decided to print more ISKs), this would have a very real impact on the real economy.

Those are all contrived examples, so regulation shouldn't be based on them, but they show the question is worth considering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> i think the gaming sector with its virtual economies is a very good representive for "real" economies. in both economies it's all about feeling, very irrational. many panics and hypes. it's a bold move by valve to hire an economist-in-residence. they are going for the big shot

</comment><comment><USER45> Maybe it's getting late, but I think i could really use an upvoted tdlr for this...

<comment><USER46> This isn't Reddit, and that sort of behavior here is actively discouraged.

<comment><USER45> My comment was sincere and I stand by it. The article was quite long and I've often seen similar summary comments for such articles here on HN. I think for really in depth articles it helps to have a good overview before commiting time and diving in (something more than an obscure title and the valve.com domain). In this case, I was initially under the impression that it was part of an ARG, a topic I am very interested in.

I should also note that I don't see anything in the guidelines about asking for a summary.

<comment><USER46> I don't disbelieve your sincerity, but was simply stating that we discourage the notion of of "TL;DR" here, as a community, whether or not it's in the guidelines.

It's also not in the guidelines (as far as I can tell by skimming) that your comments should further the conversation, but that is another ideal to which the community at large has agreed to aspire. We collude to keep comments on topic and interesting, because that's what the community wants and needs.

I wasn't casting judgement on your post but, as I noticed you were new, thought I'd offer it as advice.

On a personal note, especially with articles like this, if you are interested in the topic at hand, read the article. There really isn't any good substitute.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> This is awesome.</comment>


Credit card skimmer masquerades as favicon - <AUTHOR> https://blog.malwarebytes.com/threat-analysis/2020/05/credit-card-skimmer-masquerades-as-favicon/ <comment><USER2> If I understand correctly, the browser would need to accept text/html as a response to an <img /> tag. Why not just disable this/drop the response if it isn't an image MIME?</comment>


Web Developer Sells Name to Raise Start up Capital - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/web_developer_sells_name_to_ra.php <comment><USER2> Apparently, you _can_ put a price on your dignity.</comment>


Node.js 5.0 Released - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/v5.0.0/CHANGELOG.md <comment><USER2> So there seems to be folks complaining about how fast this release was and other folks saying it's not a big deal because 4.2.x is LTS. But I don't see anyone addressing the actual issue of breaking changes in node: npm.

What does a module author do? If my module uses an API that was changed in 5.x, do I only support 4.2.x, do I only support 5.x or do I write in some hacks to try and check between the two? What if 6.x comes in, say, 6 months and also breaks another API. Now I have 3 hacks or I only support 4.2.x or 6.x.

This is the first major version since the io.js and node.js merger so I'm not _that_ concerned yet but if they continue this pace then I will be very concerned (just like I was concerned when npm was supporting io.js and node.js when they had differences in their APIs; it forces module developers to choose and limit their availability). I would like to see some path of deprecation for node.js APIs that take multiple major versions to get away from unless it's a major security risk.

Edit: just to clarify my worry: I'm not worried _yet_. But, and this is a big but, ECMAScript doesn't include any standard libraries for interacting with systems, http, etc so node.js has kinda assumed the role of a standard, defacto library for JavaScript when dealing with a system on a level outside of a web browser. So if the breaking API changes are going to occur every year or faster, to me that's like a language's standard libraries changing every year or sooner.

Yes it's kinda not fair as node.js is NOT a set of standard JavaScript libraries but that's the role it's essentially been given due to the lack of one in ECMAScript.

<comment><USER3> hey! do you have a specific problem in mind or is this just a hypothetical musing?

'cause the actual changes that break between npm 1 and 2 are very small. (the changes to npm run, mostly, and the cache.) so it's Very Strange(tm) modules that break, and the new run behavior is much more useful

\- npm team member

<comment><USER4> Is there / could there be an option in package.json for which Node version you support? Like, v1.0.0 of my lib supports up to and including Node 4.2.1, but v2.0.0 requires Node 5? That way people would get a working version relatively seamlessly.

I realise this makes the package.json Node-specific, which might be something you want to avoid.

EDIT: to part-answer my own question, package.json has the "engines" field. Not sure if that means it automatically installs old versions in older versions of Node, though.

<comment><USER2> This is still current as far as I know: [http://www.marcusoft.net/2015/03/packagejson-and-engines- and...](http://www.marcusoft.net/2015/03/packagejson-and-engines-and- enginestrict.html)

Basically, you get an error but it won't give you the proper version. If that has changed I'd love to know, however (it most certainly should install the latest version for your environment and give you a warning that it's not the latest. In my opinion anyway).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good lord people...

1\. There is no one forcing you to upgrade, 4.2 is LTS, you've got 2yrs+

2\. 5.0 followed 4.0 so closely because 4.0 was the iojs/node merge and 5.0 was to correspond with the new V8 release, future major bumps will be closer to 6mo (to match V8)

<comment><USER6> If you are at 5.x today, and 6.x sometime next year, as a library author why would you - next year - decide to write a package for something for 4.x? That is 2 major versions outdated. If it's really major bumps every 6 months and 7.x comes out next year too, who's going to be writing new stuff for 4.x? Most new packages will probably support the current version, and then your LTS window of 2 years doesnt mean much.

<comment><USER7> > If you are at 5.x today, and 6.x sometime next year, as a library author why > would you - next year - decide to write a package for something for 4.x?

Because the target user community of what you are writing consists of the kind of users that are likely to use LTS releases.

> Most new packages will probably support the current version, and then your > LTS window of 2 years doesnt mean much.

You don't choose LTS because you want support for every new packages that haven't been written yet on the day they come out, you choose LTS because you've got something for which you want to have a stable platform with bug fixes, rather than an unstable platform with breaking changes, and are willing to not have access to the newest platform features or the newest third-party libraries that depend on them to get that stability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I recently looked at using Node for a simple API backend. ES6 seems like it's not there yet, the stability of Node makes me wary. Constant changes seem exhausting to keep up with. For a simple microservice api you don't want to be upgrading it every 3 days. The continuous change doesn't make sense to me. Trying to get up to speed on all the Node.js ecosystem feels exhausting, only to have it change a few weeks later. Maybe someone using this daily for real APIs could comment if this is the case for them?

I ended up opting for Flask and Python 3x instead, couldn't be happier. I had my API up and running within a day with no prior knowledge of Flask and some Python on and off. I've been able to discuss and teach other team members on it who were also able to pick it up easily.

<comment><USER9> JS in general moves fast and packages range from great to WTF in quality. I would suggest using Babel(or something similar) for all future JS development. That way you can use ES2015/2016 features now and have them work in most environments.

I have a built a small API using express and passport and so far these node changes have not impacted my code.

Another option for fast API development is Java 8 with SpringBoot and Jetty. People hate on Java and Spring, but the latest versions of both are very powerful and easy to get going. If you end up needing more it is there.

<comment><USER8> But then you have to keep up with Babel changes too... [http://babeljs.io/blog/2015/10/29/6.0.0/](http://babeljs.io/blog/2015/10/29/6.0.0/)

<comment><USER10> Why this urge to keep up to the latest and greatest? Especially for a transpiler? If it is converting your code just fine, why update?

<comment><USER11> Because if you don't, then a year or two down the road you're left with an unsupported legacy hell.

<comment><USER12> Node.js modules: from brand new to "unsupported legacy hell" in "a year or two."

There's no way this is sustainable, but I'm at a loss of how to fix it, especially when the ECMAScript language itself is evolving at such a rapid pace. Any ideas?

<comment><USER13> >but I'm at a loss of how to fix it, especially when the >ECMAScript language itself is evolving at such a rapid pace. >Any ideas?

Avoid Javascript on the server, problem fixed.

<comment><USER14> Pretty much. It's not like we're stuck for options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There's a lot of confusion and concern in here about the release of a new major version very soon after the release of another major version (v4.0.0 was released just a month and a half ago). Please note that this is a special release prompted largely by the odd timing of a new release of Google's V8 [1].

If you're looking for solid, long term stability, you are perfectly fine sticking with v4.0.0, as its marked an "LTS" release. This means it'll be actively receiving minor- and patch-level updates for 18 months, then for 12 months thereafter it'll get updates for severe bugs and security problems (what they call "maintenance" mode) [2].

[1] [https://twitter.com/rvagg/status/659871982670884864](https://twitter.com/rvagg/status/659871982670884864) [2] [https://medium.com/@nodesource/essential-steps-long-term- sup...](https://medium.com/@nodesource/essential-steps-long-term-support-for- node-js-8ecf7514dbd#.wutoxcg53)

<comment><USER16> Re: From the linked Twitter: "Don't feed the trolls."

I personally don't have an opinion on the quick release and am happy to just use the LTS but calling the developers "trolls" seems unnecessarily harsh for people voicing a reasonable concern, even if they were just misinformed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm not sure why so many people are freaking out.

Looking at the changelog, it looks like they decided to commit a bunch of breaking changes that were previously marked as deprecated. If your code was running before without warnings, upgrading shouldn't have a negative impact.

The pace of change is fast because node ES6 support is progressing fast enough to maintain near 1:1 feature parity with v8. A bunch of ES6 features still haven't been fully implemented in v8 but that's not the fault of the Node.js dev team.

If the dev team has committed to LTS for 4.2 that means they're likely planning to backport new features to the 4x branch. No reason to panic. Many of the more useful features of ES6 already work perfectly in 4.2.

<comment><USER18> > I'm not sure why so many people are freaking out.

Probably because you don't use any binary packages that haven't even made it to 4.x yet. My app requires one so I'm still stuck on node 0.12 until they update. I've filed a bug report but before they could even respond 5.0 is out. Not _they_ have a quandary: do they support 4.x or 5.x when they update? Npm doesn't support forks, so they can't get one version for users of 4.x and one for 5.x.

The only sensible way to fix this that I can think of is to build in an extension layer into node so that binary packages don't use raw v8 APIs (since those seem to change a lot). Then that layer can be made (more) stable, even in the face of constant v8 upgrading.

<comment><USER19> >The only sensible way to fix this that I can think of is to build in an extension layer into node so that binary packages don't use raw v8 APIs (since those seem to change a lot). Then that layer can be made (more) stable, even in the face of constant v8 upgrading.

That already exists, it's called nan: [https://github.com/nodejs/nan](https://github.com/nodejs/nan)

<comment><USER18> Yes, but it should probably be made to be the _only_ way to make extensions, instead of being optional.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Glad to see they've bumped up the V8 version so the spread operator can be used.

Things are really moving along at a good clip since the merge with io.js.

<comment><USER15> Yes, I'm very excited about the spread operator! I've been spoiled by Firefox.

<comment><USER21> Looking at documentation.. does this only work on lists (or list like object)? I.e. you can't "expand" a k:w object? Or is there another operator for this? Example:

        function foo(a=1, b=2, c=3) { return a * b * c;}
        dict = {'b': 4, 'c': 6};
        foo(...dict);

<comment><USER22> Yes and no.

You can still do something like:

        foo(... Object.keys(dict).map(name => dict[name]))

(Maybe someday you might be able to use Object.values() to achieve the exact same thing without needing to use .map)

However, the spread operator doesn't match the argument names to the object names. So the above call would mean the following:

        foo(4, 6)

And not what you'd like:

        foo(undefined, 4, 6)

However, note that you can rest an object too:

        let x = { a : 1, b : 2, c : 3 };
        let { a, ... rest } = x;

        console.log( ... rest ); // { b : 2, c : 3 }

<comment><USER23> There is a proposal for this but I'm not sure what stage that's in

<comment><USER24> Stage 2

[https://github.com/tc39/ecma262](https://github.com/tc39/ecma262) [https://github.com/sebmarkbage/ecmascript-rest- spread](https://github.com/sebmarkbage/ecmascript-rest-spread)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> We use node on Windows for our asset minifiers, hopefully the new version of NPM will make this a little more pleasant!

 _Your dependencies will now be installed maximally flat. Insofar as is possible, all of your dependencies, and their dependencies, and THEIR dependencies will be installed in your project 's node_modules folder with no nesting. You'll only see modules nested underneath one another when two (or more) modules have conflicting dependencies._

<comment><USER26> Maybe Microsoft wakes up to fix the MAXPATH limit (260 chars). Recently the improved UI of the environment variable dialog, after 25 years.

<comment><USER27> Many (most? all?) windows apis that take absolute paths can take extended length paths. Extended length paths (just add \\\?\ to the front of your normal local path, or \\\?\UNC to the front of your UNC paths) allow up to 32K paths.

I'm not really sure why node doesn't use them internally to solve the issue.

<comment><USER26> Only a few WinAPI functions can take UNC path, Explorer and cmd.exe don't support them either. The same problem has with the dotNet framework which is implemented on top of WinAPI.

Nodejs is a console application and can call system applications via command line/cmd.exe.

WinNT kernel and NTFS/ReFS have no such path limitations, that limitation comes from Win16 API and to make the job easier the Win32API and its subsystem (32-bit and 64-bit Windows since Win3.11 with Win32s addon and Win95) comes with such legacy restrictions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> And it still uses OpenSSL as a CSPRNG, rather than the operating system's CSPRNG (CryptGenRandom, /dev/urandom, etc.). I guess maybe they'll fix that in 6?

<comment><USER29> And use what in Windows? A closed-source CSPRNG? Has there ever been a serious vulnerability/problem found with OpenSSL's CSPRNG? I'm actually curious as to why this is an issue.

<comment><USER30> Only the OS can guarantee that some entropy is not handed out twice. If you can't trust your OS with that, you might have bigger problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This release timeframe was announced quite a while ago. As others have mentioned the quick jump from 4 to 5 was primarily due to the io.js convergence.

Expect future major releases on a 6 month cadence with LTS releases every 12 months

[https://nodesource.com/blog/essential-steps-long-term- suppor...](https://nodesource.com/blog/essential-steps-long-term-support-for- nodejs#how-long)

</comment><comment><USER32> For a person who's not well versed with Node's version history, what's in this update to warrant a jump from version 4 to 5?

<comment><USER33> Node now follows Semver. If you look through the changelog, there's more than a dozen changes that are breaking.

<comment><USER34> That doesn't answer the question. Node 4.0 was released a month ago. Why are there so many breaking changes in 1 month?

<comment><USER35> Thats not the question that was asked, yours is a different question. The main reason is because they are tracking v8 versions. This one hits v8 4.6 - v8 is released every 6 months and we will see node v6 in April.

Really what has happened is that v4 was a bit behind, and v5 is right on schedule which is why it seems to be changing so fast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> 4.0 being LTS pretty much requires early 5.0 release. While side-effects are significant, this is the only way to have both LTS and momentum.

</comment><comment><USER37> Uhh, wait, wasn't nodejs 4.0 only like a month ago? So are there going to be breaking changes every few months now?

<comment><USER38> Yeah, why not? Just because they upgrade node, doesn't mean you have to use that version. If you want a stable version, you'll be on the LTS release that will be supported for a long while

<comment><USER2> The only problem with that is npm is used across all versions. So each version of node that has breaking changes, what do you do as a module author? You might have to drop support for one version or the other or you add in some hacks to try and figure out which APIs you can and cannot use.

Moving fast is one thing and this is the first major version after the io.js and node.js merger so maybe this is a one-off thing; if they continue this pace with breaking changes then the ecosystem is either going to only be latest or are going to stick with 4.2.x forever.

<comment><USER39> > You might have to drop support for one version or the other or you add in > some hacks to try and figure out which APIs you can and cannot use.

If this happens, there will probably be compatibility modules like [https://github.com/nodejs/readable- stream](https://github.com/nodejs/readable-stream).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> My current node version is 4.1.0 and npm is 2.14.3. I don't see any reason to upgrade. Node PLEASE implement HTTP 2.0

<comment><USER41> This release supports ALPN, which is what was needed to get this to work: [https://github.com/molnarg/node-http2](https://github.com/molnarg/node- http2). In short, HTTP 2.0 support in this release _is_ your reason to upgrade.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> seems to be broken for mac os x, installed from 4.0.0 and seems that npm is broken, running npm install gives me npm ERR! code MODULE_NOT_FOUND.

i reverted back to 4.0.0

</comment><comment><USER43> Yeah, habemus spread operator! I also hope v6 Will be full ES6. Right now classes can be user only in strict mode :(

</comment><comment><USER44> Spread operator, yay!

</comment><comment><USER45> Support for in-process multithreading already?

</comment><comment><USER46> I found this out last night at 3am after rushing to provision a server. i don't have a great handle on semver or dev cycles, point ceded, but they released 4.2 on october 12th. thats like .1 every 2 days.

<comment><USER7> Semver versions aren't decimal numbers, the dot is a separator between categories with different semantics, not a break between tenths and integers.

Even non-semver version numbers are rarely decimal numbers, even though the major/minor distinction may be less clearly defined.

So talking about a 0.1 every _n_ days inferred from the date of a 5.0 vs. A 4.2 release doesn't make any sense; if there were actual minor releases that frequently, it would, but that is a different thing.</comment></comment>


Is it a sin to leave your cell phone plugged in overnight? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2232195

<comment><USER2> Correct me if I'm wrong, but the cell phone is going to be using about the same power when its plugged in and fully charged as it does when it is unplugged. The difference is only that the power is coming from the outlet, rather than the battery in the phone. Without some calculations on how much would be drawn from the battery, simply from having the phone on over night, its hard to say what kind of power savings are available. I would guess its next to nothing, even less than they make it out to be in the article.

</comment><comment><USER3> It says that an idle, but plugged in charger pulls around 2.3 watts. I always thought that switching chargers (most modern celphones comes with those) were able to switch themselves off (something with keeping a capacitor charged to kick the circuit online once something starts drawing power).

<comment><USER4> This is rather easy to tell. Leave your charger unplugged for an hour and feel how cold the plastic gets, then plug it in to let it idle. If you have a switching charger it should stay around roughly the same temperature as when it was unplugged, if it feels like it gets warmer then that means it's in idle and not switched off.

The flat-form transformers used in most cell chargers are rather inefficient, so the temperature difference tends to be more than expected. However when you're dealing with ~9W maximum, it's likely more energy efficient to produce a less efficient transformer than consume extra time on the production line.

<comment><USER3> Yeah -- and there also size (very small), weight (very light) and sound (coils hum at 50/60 hz, the switching ones "whine").

But I wouldn't think the lack of heat that I can feel means that it doesn't waste 2.3w?

<comment><USER5> If by "whine" you refer to a very high pitched noise (akin to a TV tube) then I'll take a non-switched one every day.

I have two such mosquito-infested powerbricks here, emitting a constant high- pitched noise each, and it's _royally_ annoying. The charger for my DECT phone emits it when the handset is not sitting on it and one of my two BenQ screens (ironically both the exact same model!) emits it when turned off.

This may be an avoidable production bug but when it strikes it's plain out horrible. I had to ban that DECT-charger from the living room because the sound would drive us nuts...

(And yes I should have returned both items as defective but on the phone I was too lazy and on the screen the noise only started after it was about 2 yrs old)

<comment><USER3> It is, and I've had some of the bad chargers as well. Usually, however, I have to press my ear against the brick to hear it at all, and have really good hearing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think we need a new unit, the 'hamsterpower', for levels of energy use which are not worth thinking about. A hamster can generate about 0.15W, so rounding, I guess we could define 1 hamsterpower = 0.1W.

<http://otherpower.com/hamster.html>

[http://en.allexperts.com/q/Science-Kids-3250/Hamster- Power.h...](http://en.allexperts.com/q/Science-Kids-3250/Hamster-Power.htm))

</comment><comment><USER7> _Would it better for me to charge my electronics during my morning commute, by plugging them into the car charger?_

A commute long enough to charge your electronics is probably a bigger "sin" than a cell phone plugged in overnight.

<comment><USER8> Saving the environment is a task that's too difficult for one person to understand, so anything that seems slightly inconvenient is good enough to satisfy most people's "needs". Changing when you charge your cell phone is a lot easier than planning your life to be lower-impact.

(I love all the SUVs filled with one grocery bag at Whole Foods. Do you really think that buying some locally-grown organic carrots offsets the energy you spent driving your military vehicle 3 blocks?)

<comment><USER9> Indeed.

"Forget Shorter Showers" ([http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4801...](http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4801/)) points out that perhaps we've duped to think that energy shortages/waste are _our_ fault, when, in fact, it's industry, large-scale agriculture, and our military that are the biggest abusers. Of course, this isn't an excuse to not be lower impact ourselves (and perhaps not purchasing products that support certain industries), but we can't be fooled into thinking that changing our charging habit is going to save the environment.

<comment><USER10> For more from the wonderful Jensen on how abusive our culture is, read A Language Older Than Words ([http://www.amazon.com/Language-Older-Than- Words/dp/189395603...](http://www.amazon.com/Language-Older-Than- Words/dp/1893956032)). If you can look past the absurd stuff about talking to animals, there is a lot to be learnt from it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I recently got the Kill-a-Watt to test electricity usage by different devices. My laptop uses a mere $13 worth of electricity per year (And that is assuming that I leave it on constantly rather than closing the lid and letting it hibernate). Modern computing devices have become so efficient that they make little impact. If you want to save energy it is better to look at your refrigerator, stove, AC, and the other major electricity burners.

<comment><USER12> I have a home music production studio with 15 devices (mixers, synths, processors, amp, laptop, ancient PC). I used a measuring device and even though the PC is supposed to use 250 watts or so, the entire studio is only 468 watts! This is a cost of around 4.68 pence an hour (I think a kilowatt here is 10 pence), which isn't bad when a commercial studio costs at least 10 pounds.

I'm not a US citizen but this helps you calculate (each value is the cost of a kilowatt):

<http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_b.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I leave my phone plugged in overnight, and when I get to work, I have it plugged into the USB drive on my computer. On the occasion where I'm driving, I've got an Alpine stereo with an iPhone adapter, and a mount for my phone, so I leave it plugged in there.

I haven't done any hard numbers, but my battery capacity doesn't seem like it's worn down from when I got the phone over two years ago.

Nonetheless, there are definitely more important things to worry about whether you're looking to cut back on your electric bill, or are trying to be more 'green.'

</comment><comment><USER14> 1) conservation of energy - if the phone is switched on, it is drawing current. If the latter is from the battery, you will pay for it (plus the charger's and DC-DC converter's inefficiencies) later.

2) battery wear - how much energy does it take to manufacture a new Li-ion pack?

</comment><comment><USER15> It seems like the phone 'knows' when it is fully charged, so why don't phone manufacturers simply disable charging once it is full?

<comment><USER16> They do.

But the switching power supply that regulates the mains voltage to 5v (or whatever is required) is always on, and although they are extremely efficient the loses do add up.

Arguably it should be possible for the phone to switch off the supply _before_ the switching power supply, but this will add complexity and cost to the product. And because the power supply is normally seperate from the phone some kind of signalling from phone to power supply would need to be implemented. Again adding complexity and cost.

As mentioned in the article, <http://www.withouthotair.com/> is well worth the read, and will help you understand what is actually worth doing to lower energy use and carbon footprint. (The book is considerably better than the appearance of the website would suggest!)

<comment><USER17> I will second the recommendation of the "Sustainable Energy – without the hot air" book, and mention that it is free to download from the above site. It looks at the debate from a technical perspective, with extensive appendixes containing the author's calculations.

One thought from the book that struck me is that all the batteries in the (eventual) nationwide fleet of electric vehicles, could serve to smooth out the fluctuations from renewable energy sources. The author envisions battery- exchange stations as commonly-found as petrol stations are today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My iPhone stops charging when it's full. (I'm going to buy a killawatt and prove it soon)

<comment><USER19> This has nothing to do with the cell phone, nut with the charger. Even if the phone stops drawing current, old-style transformer based chargers still draw power from the grid. Newer switching power supplies do not - at all, as the link above [1] showed.

[1] <http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/charger/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I expect the MSM to try and keep their audience entertained with this inane _charging your electronic crap is killing the earth_ meme. But I would think HN is the one place this meme would not be able to infect. Am I wrong?

<comment><USER21> I don't know whether to point out the article is arguing against that it's killing the earth or question if you even opened the link before responding. I thought hn was the one place the latter was avoided (and hey, why comment if you disapprove of the thread's popularity?).

<comment><USER20> I did read the article, but already knew the meme is stupid and wrong and thought the same of the HN readership, thus I'm surprised to see it in any form, pro or against.

And I comment when I disapprove of a thread because the _flag and shut up_ mantra has never sat right with me. I prefer to explain why I dislike something.

<comment><USER21> If all you did was explain why you disapproved of things you'd be giving undo (reasonably) attention towards something you felt was stupid. Why waste the time when you're not obliged? That's all I'm curious about - you could find another topic more important and make that topic popular.

<comment><USER20> It's a (perhaps undo) attempt to purge non-HN type stories from HN. It's a kind of not very useful or productive hobby.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's disheartening that the Slate analysis does not calculate the approximate cost in dollars of alternate leaving-things-plugged-in strategies.

Even when prices are distorted by non-competitive markets, subsidies, regulation, and so forth, they remain vaguely related to the actual opportunity costs of a path of action.

According to this chart, the average retail price of a kilowatt-hour in the US varies from about 8¢ (West Virginia) to 22¢ (Hawaii).

<http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_a.html>

So given Slate's estimate that leaving a phone plugged in an unnecessary 8 hours every day for a year would use 6.5 kWh, we're talking about a cost over the whole year of 54¢ to $1.43.

Is a full year of fussing with the charger to minimize hours-plugged-in worth a savings of $1.43 in time or energy? If once, over many years of following this strategy, it means your phone dies at an inopportune moment, was it worth the years of savings?

We spend energy all the time for convenience, and $2/year for not having to micromanage a device that's supposed to make life easier is a bargain.</comment>


Sexting, your lack of privacy and the iPad: a perfect storm? - <AUTHOR> http://gravitationalpull.net/wp/?p=1310 <comment><AUTHOR> Post from last year worth thinking about again in light of 7th circuit court decision that allowed firing of a guy for violating his employer's acceptable use policy even though he was doing it on his own time.</comment>


How to Cook a Turkey in the Microwave? - <AUTHOR> https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/103742/how-to-cook-a-turkey-in-the-microwave <comment><USER2> A woman cooked a turkey in a microwave on the WGN Morning News this morning. The key was to baste it with soy sauce to simulate the browning you get from an oven.

When microwaves were new, enormous, and came with built-in probe thermometers, my father cooked a turkey in the microwave. I don't remember if it was good or not. But it seems like they were much more versatile in the early years. He used to cook all kinds of cakes and things in it, and very often put aluminum foil in it without fear of electrical arcs. Something about how it was arranged.

I don't use my microwave for anything more interesting than making popcorn and melting butter and peanut butter.</comment>


Germany's Vanishing Military - <AUTHOR> http://thesoundingline.com/germanys-vanishing-military/ <comment><USER2> As a German I want to see my tax money spent in education, health service, hell, even development assistance, but not warfare. For some reason "neutral countries" ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_country)) understood that. What a pity that Germany doesn't make this step.</comment>


I Was a Useful Idiot for Capitalism - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/i-was-useful-idiot-capitalism/615031/ <comment><USER2> This was a very good read, highly recommended for those that may pass by in the future. Long article, and lacking in meaningful conclusion on how to move forward, but a great history lesson that admits to a lot of mistakes.

</comment><comment> will-mortar Aren't we all useful idiots for capitalism?! Ed Bernays made sure of that after the First World War.

If you are moved by this, watch 'the century of the self' by Adam Curtis

</comment><comment><USER3> apparently this person really is a useful idiot lmao</comment>


HN header's background color was changed from #FF6600 to #cc1010, too dark? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> It's just a temporary change for the holidays (along with the green and red colored numbers on each story).

<comment><USER3> Are you sure? See: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6965178](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6965178)

Although I am not seeing any change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> No. It was just the right shade for "christmas red".</comment>


Here Come China's Drones - <AUTHOR> http://thediplomat.com/2013/03/01/here-comes-chinas-drones/

<comment><USER2> I wonder if someone will have courage to kill a terrorist in US soil, just to show US they can do like US do to another countries.

<comment><USER3> Drone strikes against "terrorists" are almost exclusively over territory that is actively supportive of the "freedom fighter". This is why there were so many bombings of weddings (if target X's niece is getting married you know he will turn up. So watch the uploads on Facebook or observe from the next hill. Bomb the whole place when target arrives. This was such bad PR it got stopped pretty fast)

Anyway my point is assassination with drones is hard and always has collateral - but if the target is in an area that is not actively protecting him then the traditional methods of walking up and shooting him is much more viable. America has no such areas protecting terrorists (unless _maybe_ some areas with the KKK but hardly. Oh and actual members of go ernment but that's playing with the definition of terrorist too much)

I suspect it happens more than we hear about (Litveneko and the polonium being the obvious case)

<comment><USER4> > This was such bad PR it got stopped pretty fast

I was thinking about this and I wonder if "no such thing as bad PR" applies here as well. Think about it, this is done by people who get paid to blast away "terrorists". It involves both government contractors who build drones working with those who operate them (presumably pretty close relationship). Declaring that "all terrorists are done and we are closing up shop" is like firing themselves. I know Africa is hot now and L3 is hiring linguists for it, but why not milk the ME cow for all it's worth right. If one strike at wedding produces 10 more terrorist leaders -- that is like investing in future growth. They would be silly not to do it.

> suspect it happens more than we hear about (Litveneko and the polonium being > the obvious case)

Except that in that case the goal seems to be exactly for as many as possible to hear about it. These people are not stupid, they know to "suicide" and accidenta-kill people. Using something as exotic as Po-210 is not stupidity, the point was to send a strong warning to any would be defectors. It is a message saying you betray us, we'll find you and assassinate you.

<comment><USER3> I am pretty sure US govt killing civilians in an attempt to ensure a supply of terrorists to keep them employed in the future is a fairly robust definition of insanity :-)

<comment><USER4> If true it is probably never spoken of out-loud. But it could be one of those 'nudge nudge wink wink' type things. I know marking the wedding event as a target is probably going to create some more terrorist activity in the future and I just go ahead and do it. My superior kind of agrees. The contractor who designs the drone probably doesn't have to make it super 'surgical accuracy' just make sure it explodes better, the "intelligence" on the ground realizes that if they work too hard, they'll soon be out of a job as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> its pretty interesting to think about the implications. A few thoughts.

Air power has been a decisive advantage in recent wars (e.g. Desert Storm).

Seems possible/probable that the victor of future wars will be determined by who has the better drone air-force.

<comment><USER3> Actually I seriously doubt air power will continue to win - Raytheon have now demonstrated a lorry sized 25KW laser, and chemical lasers can deliver 100kw (from a site the size of a car park so less useful)

Anyway, line of sight medium range lasers are really here, and long distance (hundreds of KM) feasible.

Stick one of these every 100km round your borders and try flying an aircraft overhead.

Air power may soon be just another casualty of the march of progress - and the billions it costs to run an aircraft carrier may seem a little expensive.

<comment><USER6> Serious lasers + warships will be the game changer. A Destroyer's engines for power and the sea as a heat sink. A bottomless magazine and total domination of the airspace out to the horizon. Suddenly you don't need a carrier to provide topcover for amphibious operations, for example. You can put dozens of destroyers to sea for the cost of one carrier.

<comment><USER7> "Suddenly you don't need a carrier to provide topcover for amphibious operations,"

Airplanes do more than keep away other airplanes. They're also useful to blow up the enemy ashore, close air support for the grunts, deep tactical missions to isolate the battlefield.

You're still going to need flying machines. Need some way to get them close to the battlefield. This might not Ford class super carrier but it's going to be _some_ kind of carrier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well, if you look it from the perspective, that a Bipolar (2 sections) world against a Uni-Polar(US), its kinda good for the world as proven by history. 2 WW were enough to teach us the cost of worldwide war, the time has changed, the no of war-mongers have decreased considerably.

Consider, how USSR and US were before 90's, yes, things were more delicate than today, at a time when communication was not that rampant, but it occasionally did put in check each one of them.

Like USSR interfered towards the end of Veitnam War, no offence against US, but when you have power, the road becomes tough, and you need the occasional wake up call to see what is wrong and what is right.

Russia holds that baton even today, but somehow people are only seeing the world being Bipolar between US-China, even though the current balance is something like Russia + China = US in terms of power.

Power does not mean, any of them have to flaunt it, I will say it again, don't look at who is building which weapon, because all you gonna do is get anxious and build a better one.

We as PEOPLE, must not give power to these war symbols, we should be anxious about ground realities. The growing unemployment in US, the need of reform of education in US, the need for liberty and freedom of speech in China, and much more.

going into Space age, we the people should be concerned, and should push to make space free of boundaries, so the problem of today, stay on the earth only.</comment>