I don't trust the secondhand reporting and translation work here. I have seen several korean articles which claimed that Dr. Hyun-Tak Kim disavowed both papers. This would be very significant, as he is the coauthor with the h index! However, in the korean articles where this claim has a cited source, the source is his new scientist interview, in which he disavowed only the first paper (the one with 3 authors, including Kwon and excluding Hyun-Tak Kim):
I have not seen any credible direct quotes which show that any of the authors have distanced themselves from the second paper (the one with 6 authors including Hyun-Tak Kim).
My tentative read is that every author besides Kwon is likely thinking "this is not ready / not real, but if I pump the brakes on the hype train, Kwon will get all the credit in the unlikely event that it replicates quickly, so it's best to stay tight-lipped for the moment."
That is quite an analogy with bad sex, someone suffers premature publication, and then its too embarrassing for the others involved to make a comment if anyone came...
a counterpoint to this narrative: grants/scholarships have been rising rapidly, so actual net tuition prices are surprisingly flat in recent years.
> Between 2006-07 and 2019-20, COA [cost of attendance] increased by around 27% at both types of institutions, but declined by 7-8% in the few years after that. The recent decline occurred because colleges posted similar nominal COA increases as in the past, but inflation was higher. Overall, COA increased by almost 20% over those 16 years at both types of institutions.
> But average net prices rose at a considerably more modest pace. Between 2006-07 and 2019-20, average net price increased by 13% and 7% at public and private four-year institutions, respectively. Those increases reversed in the post-COVID years. Overall, average net prices are largely unchanged, adjusted for inflation, compared to 2006-07.
in the past 15 years in particular, the big story of college pricing is that it has become more progressive, i.e. more expensive for those with higher incomes.
I can vouch for this. My daughter went to Yale. I paid the "Yale tax" of 20% of my income. An that only because I made more than $100K. Below $100K parental salary and it's free.
Derek's writing influenced me quite a bit in the early 2000s. I bootstrapped a software business from zero to near $10m in annualized revenue, and sold it almost half a decade ago. I contributed 100% of my equity into a charitable remainder trust because I learned about that idea from his website.
Since then, I've done a lot of "puttering". I'm teaching myself jazz guitar, and I'm currently enrolled in law school. I have basically unlimited time to read whatever interests me. If I could go back five years and give myself some advice, I would say that "enough" is not durably satisfying. Purpose is durably satisfying. Purpose arises from constraints. Having "enough" means you lack a particular type of constraint. Thus, enough" can get in the way of developing purpose, particularly if you are somewhat undisciplined like me.
(Also, I would abolish charitable remainder trusts from the tax code. I created one for lifestyle reasons not tax reasons, but after experiencing the tax consequences firsthand, I think they are profoundly unfair.)
I had a bunch of equity in a startup that had a cost basis of, essentially, $0. Under normal circumstances, I would have sold this for $millions, and would have paid nearly 20% in capital gains taxes immediately.
Instead, I contributed my equity to a CRUT. I paid zero capital gains taxes at that moment, and the CRUT pays zero capital gains taxes ever. Also, because a contribution to the trust is a contribution in part to charity (with proportions calculated according to actuarial figures of my life expectancy), I got a charitable tax deduction of many million dollars which I was able to carry forward for many years.
Each year I owe taxes on the 5% which the CRUT distributes to me every year, but since this is capital gains income, it is taxed at a very low rate -- which is effectively reduced even further because it is offset by the charitable deduction which I have been able to carry forward.
The net effect is that I'm paying capital gains taxes in a tiny trickle over the remainder of my lifetime, and I also got a giant charitable deduction to offset those capital gains taxes. When I die, the principal in the trust goes to charity. The IRS will never get the kind of bite at this equity that I would intuitively expect it to get.
I don't understand how this capital gains tax loophole could be beneficial to society. I think it should be removed from the tax code.
Another side effect of the CRUT I hadn't anticipated: Occasionally, I note the intrusive thought that my continued life is the one and only barrier which is keeping a decent amount of capital from serving charitable purposes right now. That's honestly pretty depressing sometimes.
Thanks! I think I get it, but not fully yet: if you'd deplete the entire trust before dying, you'd have paid the same capital gains tax as you would've if you had not made the trust, correct? Just spread out over many years.
Why do you feel that it is a loophole if you pay the same, just at different times? (except over what you give to charity, but isn't charity untaxed pretty much across the board in the US?)
EDIT: by they way, yours is the first tax related comment that I recall reading that complains about unfair rules that are in your favour. Hats off, I had expected the opposite answer.
I came here to ask the same, @tkiley. It seems the main benefits of your CRUT are (a) deferring your capital gains taxes until later and (b) allowing you to make deductions for charitable giving. But ofc those come at a cost, namely that you don't get paid until later (5% yearly), and that you have to give to charity.
Can't anyone just give to charity and get a deduction? And doesn't everyone get taxed later when they're paid later?
You're right, a lot of the benefit is in deferring taxes to a later date. This deferral is quite valuable when you consider the time value of money and the fact that by spreading out $millions of gains over many decades, I get to put a lot more of the gains in a lower tax bracket, where if it all came in one year, it would basically all be taxed at 20%.
When you combine decades of deferral with the sizeable charitable deduction, it feels like double dipping. If putting equity in the crut only gave me one or the other (deferred taxation or a big deduction) that would seem intuitively fair. But both together? That feels absurd.
A is super useful because normally if you sold your stock to diversify, you'd need to pay capital gains then. If you do it in a CRUT, you don't have to pay until later.
You also get an upfront deduction, which could be bigger (or smaller) than what the charity eventually gets.
Whether that's bad depends on how you feel about the way your government spends tax money. Because you used a CRUT, the money that doesn't support you will go to some worthy charity, instead of funding a series of wars, pervasive surveillance, and cages for kids.
Of course the government also does many worthwhile things, but your extra money will be spent entirely on worthwhile things, and not at all on horrific ones.
The problem with this thinking is that only those privileged enough to take advantage of it get to pick how their tax money is spent.
I disagree with (even despise) some of the ways government spends our money, but should I get to choose like some special snowflake while most don't have the same opportunity?
This just enforces a rigged economy... and guess what? Many of the privileged few would support government programs the rest of the so called democracy wouldn't.
Your tacit assumption is that wealthy individuals who can take advantage of bullshit tax favoritism will spend that extra money in worthwhile (subjective) ways.
I would certainly prefer a government that doesn't spend money on horrific things at all. It'd be great if I could pay my taxes without feeling dirty. I'm hopeful that maybe, with a lot of hard work and creativity, we'll manage to fix our democracy.
But in the meantime, I don't think there's anything morally wrong about legally reducing taxes and sending the money to charity instead. I'd even argue that, since privilege is an issue, we should expand this opportunity beyond the privileged few.
I'm criticising the system more than the individual. That being said, I've noticed that people will rail against big brother and all these rules and yet turn around and take advantage of any flaw in the system because they can (everyone else is doing it!). Proving that we need hyper-specific and cumbersome rules because no one is capable of policing themselves.
That's true! I'm happy that I am paying low taxes. It just seems ridiculous that my effective tax rate is so much lower than the effective tax rate paid by other people.
As best I can make out, a CRUT reduces your tax burden dramatically if 1) you are young, and 2) you fund the CRUT with equity that has a very low cost basis. I don't think the tax code should contain a special magic wand that reduces tax liability so low for this particular situation, because this advantage seems unfair to people who accrue their wealth over a lifetime by more traditional means.
Seems it'd be a substantial savings even if only (2) is true. A 55-year-old who's retiring a bit early after holding Amazon for twenty years could avoid a lot of capital gains.
Thanks for this detailed explanation - it matches the conclusions I had after some research into the matter (stimulated by Derek's sharing his experience!).
I don't think you should ever feel guilty or depressed for... not dying! Really. Think that, unlike most cases, when you will eventually die, instead of passing your large fortune to your heirs, it will all go to charity. That's beautiful, and nice, and better than what most people do. Feel proud of it.
Recently, I read back through some of my forum posts on HN and elsewhere from the past ten years. In hindsight, I see that I often erred on the side of harshness, and often conflated cynicism and intelligence. As I get older, I see increasing value in a bias toward kindness. Thank you for your kind words.
Well, you don't really "own" capital, you've "just" earned an authorization to spend some amount per year. It's like a debit card thats auto refilled every year. In the meantime "your" capital is being invested and reinvested by various firms. If you owned a valuable lake and deprived others from using it while you're alive, that would be a different story. But money? Meh, those are completely virtual constructs.
> I would abolish charitable remainder trusts from the tax code.
They've been reducing the scope of new trusts over time. When I looked into it around 2014, a young person couldn't actually make a lifetime income CRUT because the requirement for 5% distribution, and the low interest rates at the time made the actuarial calculations show a zero balance for the charity at the end, but you need to show at least 10% for the charity at the end. A fixed term just doesn't seem as good.
I ended up just paying federal cap gains and CA income on most of it, but I did donate some of the near $0 basis stock to a DAF, and sold a small portion of the equity after moving to WA. Some of that was QSBS which was nice, but having seen the 2001 stock market, leaving it undiversified to save on taxes didn't seem worth it.
Charitable remainder trusts are setup as irrevocable, if properly drafted. It would be difficult to equitably unwind them after the fact.
Changing how CRUTs are treated ex-post facto would also raise doubts about how Roth IRAs will be treated. There's already people who don't trust that the federal government will keep those tax free.
There are all sorts of decisions made based partially on taxes that the government later changes going forward. And those changes cause a ton of issues. Just seems like should all be one way or the other.
I'm surprised that a "Free Speech" network would demand that its users indemnify it against liability arising from their speech. Here's Parler's ToS:
> You agree to defend and indemnify Parler [...] from and against any and all claims, actions, damages, obligations
losses, liabilities, costs or debt, and expenses (including but not limited to all attorneys fees) arising from or relating to your access to and use of the Services. Parler will have the right to conduct its own defense, at your expense, in any action or proceeding covered by this
indemnity.
Twitter has no similar clause, because 47 USC § 230 provides computer services with a pretty good shield against liability of this kind. I'm not sure why Parler would include such a clause.
There are hundreds of constants in there. A lot of them appear to be wild-ass guesses. Presumably, all of them affect the output of the model in some way.
When a model has enough parameters for which you can make unsubstantiated guesses, you have a ton of wiggle room to generate whatever particular output you want. I'd like to see policy and public discussion focus more on the key parameters (R-naught, hospitalization rate, fatality rate) and less on overly-sophisticated models.
You're correct to focus on the effect of parameter choices over code quality. It's been a little funny to watch a bunch of software engineers freak out about unit tests while ignoring everything else that has a much larger impact on the output of the model. I would bet large sums of money that this code is producing the correct output according to the model/parameter specifications.
All I can say is welcome to epidemiology. The spread of a disease is highly dependent on a host of factors that we have very little insight into. Even simple things like hospitalization rate or fatality rate can be difficult if not impossible to estimate accurately. Epidemiologists are open about this, but few people ever want to listen. Humans just aren't good at truly conceptualizing uncertainty.
The theory behind disease spread models is relatively sound, but they're highly dependent on accurate estimates of input parameters, and governments have not prioritized devoting resources toward improving those estimates. I sat in on discussions between epidemiologists and government officials about COVID models. The response to nearly every question was "we don't know, but here's our best guess". I listened to them beg officials for random testing of the population to improve their parameter estimates. That testing never happened.
The problem is, unsophisticated models do not predict anything. You apply them in one country and they do ok, and apply them in another and they get it totally and completely wrong.
Unless all important factors are accounted for, they are going to result in incorrect information for someone. Public policy will then be based on incorrect predictions. People will grow tired of the predictions being wrong and they'll give up on data science entirely.
It's already quite bad that people think they can choose their reality by finding numbers that agree with them and ignoring the ones that don't.
I do understand the point you are making, which is like the epicycles argument. But in global warming and epidemics alike, more parameters are actually needed to model reality.
I do agree that those parameters should be based on actual data, not guesses though. But what value of R would you pick? Is that actually well-constrained?
I would pick a value of R that shows itself to have good predictive accuracy.
The way to test predictive models is always to look for their predictive accuracy on holdout data. Machine learning has this ingrained. Classic statistics does this too -- AIC is used to compare models, and it's (asymptotically) leave-one-out cross validation [1].
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with models that have millions of parameters; they might overfit in which case they will have poor predictive accuracy on holdout data, or they might predict well.
I agree with the original article that software engineer scrutiny isn't appropriate for this sort of code -- but I would argue instead that it needs a general-purpose statistician or data scientist or ML expert to evaluate its predictive accuracy. You can't possibly figure this out from a simulator codebase.
At the time the model was published, and acted on by the UK government, there was very little data on which to test predictive accuracy. That's fine -- all it means is that the predictions should have been presented with gigantic confidence intervals.
The model isn't predictive though - it's a simulator. If we'd waited until we had enough data to make predictions with it (which I doubt you could given the sheer number of parameters) it'd be too late to use any of the interventions.
How would you ethically collect training data for the interventions?
The outputs of the model _were_ being treated as predictions.
The Ferguson paper from 16 March used the language of prediction: "In the (unlikely) absence of any control measures [...] given an estimated R0 of 2.4, we predict 81% of the GB and US populations would be infected over the course of the epidemic." [1]. The news coverage also used that language: "Imperial researchers model likely impact of public health measures" [2]. And look at the rest of the comments in this discussion, and count how many types "predict" appears!
> If we'd waited until we had enough data to make predictions with it
This is like the drunk looking for their keys under a streetlight. "Did you lose the keys here?" "No, but the light is much better here." -- "How confident are you in your model's predictions?" "I have no idea, but it's the model I have."
Also -- the Ferguson model made predictions, based on the parameters they picked. You don't need to wait for data to make predictions; you only need data to validate your predictions.
> How would you ethically collect training data for the interventions?
You don't. You (as a scientist who influences public policy) should publish validated confidence intervals for your predictions. You (as a government) should understand that there is a huge margin of uncertainty in the predictions, and accept that sometimes you just have to make decisions in the absence of knowledge. You (both the scientist and the government) do not go around spouting "Our decisions are led by science".
> The problem is, unsophisticated models do not predict anything. You apply them in one country and they do ok, and apply them in another and they get it totally and completely wrong.
That's the nature of all models, "sophisticated" or not. Relatively simple models may or may not be useful for a particular case, just as relative complex models may be.
I don't know -- and until we can agree on the answer to your simple question with a high degree of confidence, I think complex models based on specific assumed values of R obscure more than they reveal.
A little bit of modeling is useful because humans are intuitively bad at exponential math and we need scary graphs to jolt us awake sometimes. But when we don't even know the basic parameters (transmission/hospitalization/fatality) with a high degree of precision, complex models with myriad parameters create a false sense of confidence.
We have a model, we can run some sensitivity analysis, then we can go out and collect data to better estimate the parameters to which we are sensitive to. Important but not glamorous work and hence underfunded.
I was asked to look at the spatiotemporal parameters and modeling, separate from any code issues. That part of the model is astonishingly naive, apparently oblivious to existing research and science on the matter that strongly recommends a different and much more nuanced approach. Industry has invested inordinate amounts of money in understanding how to build effective real-world predictive models of this type and none of that knowledge is reflected here. That seems like a rather glaring oversight and alone voids any utility as a predictive model.
I partially agree with the comment above, but I also think it misunderstands how numerical models are often used. At least where I've built them (not epidemiology), the goal wasn't necessarily to gather the most accurate set of inputs and produce the most accurate prediction of the output. The goal was often to help a highly skilled operator explore the parameter space and guide their intuition on the problem, to help that person and simulation together reach some decision.
So code quality mattered less then usual. If there's a significant bug, then the operator will probably notice, and if there's an insignificant bug then no one cares. The large number of input parameters also doesn't matter. The operators are fully aware that they could artificially manipulate the output to wherever they wanted, but to do so would be cheating only themselves.
It feels to me like Ferguson's model was built with similar intent, and probably served that purpose well. The problem came only when the media portrayed the model as a source of authority apart from the people operating it, perhaps to create a feeling of objectivity behind the decisions driven from that. That created an expectation of rigor that either didn't exist (in the software engineering), or fundamentally can't exist given our current knowledge of the science (in the input assumptions).
This reminds me of the Drake equation. A sound formula for the probability extra terrestrial life..but half the parameters are wild guesses that can differentiate in orders of magnitude.
Even though the answer to your question is "no", many lawyers will advise you to add the copyright symbol anyway. Even if the symbol is not operative by law, it still operates on the minds of potential copyists who don't know whether it matters. In this regard, the copyright symbol is kinda like the "protected by ADT" sign in a front yard: It's not protection per se, but it might serve as a deterrent.
On the other hand, the likelihood that a mere copyright symbol will deter economically-consequential copying from a website/webapp is quite low. Therefore, as a former founder and current law student (and definitely not a lawyer yet), I'd advise you to do whatever the hell makes sense for your business for ancillary reasons. Add the symbol if you think you're dealing with superstitious folks to whom a copyright symbol lends an aura of credibility; omit it if you are going for a clean aesthetic.
Speaking of lawyers, unless a person is prepared to lawyer up, asserting copyright is largely empty. Litigating copyright takes time and money and energy. In typical infringement, the possible rewards will be blood from a stone scale. There are exceptions of course, but they don’t usually involve “the principle of the matter.”
Important to clarify that the answer is 'No' not because it is somehow an invalid way of marking copyright, but rather because it's not necessary.
You, as the author, automatically have copyright for your own creative works. No registration, marking or anything else needed. It also doesn't matter whether you share it or not - copyright is an automatic right.
Personally, I often use the footer (old, missing, sketchy name, giant company for niche market) to ignore a portion of vaporware/market tests without having to interpret any marketing babble..
Lawyers exist to get paid. We all know, for instance, that copyright notices in source code are pointless (and I mean like an extensive message in every single file) but it's more important for a lawyer to cover their ass from any possibly liability than to make the company more efficient. And of course, it creates work for them.
That's true for copyright notices in comments that get stripped out in compilation where the source itself isn't released. But a copyright notice in a no-op variable, or otherwise embedded in the distributed code, can help win a lawsuit by directly proving copying (which can sometimes be a nontrivial effort).
Text in distributed executables helped win a case for Apple back in the 1980s: "James Huston, an Apple systems programmer, concluded that the Franklin programs were 'unquestionably copied from Apple and could not have been independently created.' He reached this conclusion not only because it is 'almost impossible for so many lines of code' to be identically written, but also because his name, which he had embedded in one program (Master Create), and the word 'Applesoft', which was embedded in another (DOS 3.3), appeared on the Franklin master disk." Apple Computer Corp. v. Franklin Computer Corp., 714 F.2d 1240, 1245 (3d Cir. 1983) (Emphasis added.)
Work for the lawers? In my experience, it creates work for the developers, who maintain the automated license checks; rejects changes missing the nessasarry copyright; deal with files that cannot have a copyright notice for technical reasons; notice when they want to merge in a file with an incomopatable copyright.
My understanding is that registering with the copyright office and adding the goofy footer makes it much easier to sue for statutory damages, which can lead to a payout several orders of magnitude bigger than a lawsuit for "actual" damages
Someone copies a source file, maybe you can argue that it’s accidental. Someone copies a source file and strips out the copyright notice, that shows intent.
It takes an argument by a lawyer in front of a trier if fact before stripping copyright from source files shows anything. Irrespective of details, the wherewithal to lawyer up is mostly what matters because “fuck you sue me” is a sound legal strategy in so many cases. Or to put it another way, unless you have a lawyer on retainer the odds of bring a ne’erdowell to heel are low and one on retainer is probably saying it’s not worth it if they’re worth their salt. YMMV
If the pi is designed to throttle at a temperature where its lifespan is reduced from 50 to 49 years, then it is throttling at a gratuitously low temperature that affects quite a few use cases.
On the other hand, if it is designed to throttle at a temperature that materially reduces the lifespan, then it needs a fan to preserve its lifespan.
Either way, the hardware is starkly suboptimal for a pretty large set of advertised use cases until you add a fan.
> If the pi is designed to throttle at a temperature where its lifespan is reduced from 50 to 49 years, then it is throttling at a gratuitously low temperature that affects quite a few use cases.
That's another claim that needs evidence. It seems possible to me that the thermal throttling is designed to prevent logic errors.
lag compensating projectiles on the client decreases usability more often than you'd think.
Projectiles like rockets apply a lot of forces to the player which are not easily predictable. If you fire a rocket and client-side prediction has it leaving your vicinity without collision but the server has someone stepping into the path of the rocket so it explodes close enough that the explosion exerts force that changes your position, you're going to have a really bad misprediction on the player's position, which of course can get waaaay worse if the player launches another rocket while the first rocket's effect on player position has not been sorted out properly.
> They are putting on steam largely because of the USA's shit healthcare system "after Zach's latest cancer scare, we determined that with my healthcare plan's copay etc., I'd be wiped out if I had to undergo the same procedures . . "
I have mixed feelings about this.
On the one hand, it totally sucks.
On the other hand, I suspect that as as consequence of this crappy pressure, Dwarf Fortress will reach a substantially wider audience and bring joy to a greater number of people.
I'll be interested to see how Tarn looks back on this moment in, say, five years.
Every friend I’ve turned onto either game was basically lost for months, then returned to the world like a shipwrecked survivor. It was all long beards and uncut hair, wild eyes and impossible tales. These games are so good they should come with rehab.
I wish these games would still have that effect on me. I mean, I can totally see it happening back when I was 20-25 years old.
When I try to start factorio, df, rimworld today, I can see the systems, I can feel the ocd style appeal and feedback loops grabbing me, until I realize after one hour that 1) this is just the same as work, 2) someone else has already optimized the crap out of this, better then I'd ever have time for and 3) I might be better off doing real work instead, lest I feel guilty.
I then uninstall the game, never to return. It's pretty dreary as ultimately all games end up as thinly veiled optimization or grinding boxes that can be tuned, if you only put in the effort. Recent triple a focus on grinding, addictive elements and microtransactions have made this worse.
I've been thinking a lot about finding a genre or mechanic that would still "work", but I find it sad that I cannot get the long term enjoyment without worry anymore from games as I could years ago.
I know this feeling - you're climbing up that hill at the very beginning, trying to figure out the mechanics and what the game is about. Then when you finally crest it, you see the whole game set out before you like a beautiful valley... and you realize, "this is going to take hours and days, and I already understand it." You judge the time required vs. the enjoyment that may be gained, and the game loses. And it's sad, because you want the game to win, but you can't just let it.
One game I'll recommend if you're in this boat with me is Slay the Spire - it's a roguelike, so you play run after run from the beginning, instead of working from the same save like Factorio. The mechanics vary from run to run, sometimes significantly, because the cards and relics you collect along the way can completely change how the game plays. I've been enjoying it for a few months now, and while I sometimes put it away for a week or two at a time, I'm still coming back to it. I think part of it is I'm playing to figure out how to survive a run, not to figure out how the game works.
Anyway, check it out - definitely worth $25, and it may give you that long-term enjoyment you're looking for. Though I think, to paraphrase Stand By Me, "I don't have any games like I did when I was 10. Jesus, does anybody?"
The 7DRL Challenge just completed this past weekend. A lot of the entries are quite small, and runs can be quite short. I think the 7-day time limit contributes to that.[1]
I enjoy both of those, but have been playing more Slay the Spire recently. It has wonderful diversity in viable builds, and most runs you end up with something unexpected. A delightful sense of discovery and mastery.
I tend to feel that way about Factorio, but I strongly don't about Dwarf Fortress (or Rimworld). Both of those games are story generators. It's about the things thrown at you and the ways you cope--or don't, which is also fun--with the unexpected while building something you think is cool.
Dwarf Fortress in particular doesn't care about optimization (either of code or of your play). Build what you want. Figure out what you think is cool and do it. There are, literally, no goals other than the ones in your head.
Thanks for making the connection to work -- I keep having this same thing, all the time, about many endeavors. "If I'm going to invest all this time learning _x_, why don't I spend the same time learning _a real thing_ that can help with my actual life?"
On the one hand it sounds like I've become a joyless husk (which may be true.) On the other hand, maybe I should play the larger real-life game that has so much better payoffs?
You guys need to draw a line and realize “this part is fun.” And “this part is work, and I want to imagine it is fun because I get ahead, but honestly it’s not fun but I’m proud/happy of/with myself if I do it.”
Fun is a critical part of life, Its the point of living as Opposed to surviving.
> "If I'm going to invest all this time learning _x_, why don't I spend the same time learning _a real thing_ that can help with my actual life?"
Because learning a real thing that can help you will probably take 3 to 6 years and has a relatively high risk of failure. In that same time frame you can play a hundred different games each with a unique experience.
Real world achievements usually require significantly higher time investments with systems that are almost entirely beyond your control (no modding support unfortunately) and having something to show will often result in long term responsibilities, many you will never escape from.
At least with games you can save and quit at any time.
Well to entertain the other side of that argument: the real world is filled with cheating and inopporunity. Why waste your time drudging through a world of bullshit when you can entertain or define your own pursuit of happiness? If that happens to be video games, why wouldn't you wish you did more of that?
I have banned myself from playing any "building" games like Factorio, Minecraft, etc. Any time I get that itch, I work on my side-project on AWS. AWS is so big with so many systems, it's kind of like a big complex game. Building functionality is "progression", the core-gameplay loop. Dollars spent is "currency" (though the goal is to minimise, rather than maximise). Balancing "currency" against "progression" is the meta-game. I feel very lucky to still be able to enjoy coding after 20 years.
I have this same problem. In factorio for example.
Either I use other people's efficient designs that are more optimal and then I feel like I'm just copy pasting and not playing.
Or I end up wanting to write a program or design things that can produce the optimal designs. All of which involve not actually playing the game but playing excel spreadsheet or programming dynamic programming algorithms.
I like games that allow min maxing a lot. But they need to be in such a way that there is more to the game and less copyable stuff. So that I can enjoy and play the game.
One way you could play is embrace the imperfect, know that not everything has to be optimal, and learn to adjust to the circumstances.
I find myself wanting to build perfect things so I speak from experience in needing to let things go and adapt to the situation rather than seeking a perfect play through.
This is how I feel about Factorio along with basically every Zachtronics game ever. I want to get into it but I could literally get paid for doing the same thing. I guess I'm just lucky to be able to do work that I love (or conversely to be built such that I enjoy things that are useful.)
Game dev in my 40s here. I have the same problem. The way I mitigate it is by sampling lots of games and just giving myself permission to just do that. You gotta figure all creative persuits are like this. Winemakers can't drink all the wine they ever see. Don't be too hard on yourself and just enjoy the new shiny when you see it... Take a taste and move on. Had a blast playing recroom on Oculus over the weekend. Had to take a nap afterwards.. lol. Don't know if I'll go back in any time soon.
This is why, from the beginning, Factorio never appealed to me. I haven't played a single minute of it despite the fact I know I'd be good at it.
You may be engineering your own solution, but it's still the solution to someone else's problem. When you win, it's an empty feeling.
With respect to sandbox games, games like Minecraft truly offer you unlimited freedom. Minecraft is completely open. You get dropped into a new world with no instructions and no goals. The only problems are your own, and so your solutions feel like your own. Your victories feel like your own. Your defeats feel like your own. You feel like you're in another world, not working overtime at your desk solving problems.
With respect to other genres, look for something between challenge and wonder. Find games which are made with 100% love no matter the complexity or fidelity. Each level, take in everything you see and think about how someone laboriously designed every art asset you see, every system you use, every character, dialogue, level chunk, etc.
Take in these games as the massive, collaborative works of art that they are. When you're playing them, you're setting aside time in your week to become a receptacle for someone else's vision. A patron of their art.
Find games which you're still thinking about months after you've beaten them. Find games which have dead simple mechanics and are designed around short bursts of focused, intense gameplay, with which you can spend the next few years of your life slowly and methodically honing your skills in the small gaps between important engagements.
Play old games. Don't just play the latest and greatest. Video games are only half a century old, it's still possible to play many of the bonafide classics without devoting your life to it. You'll find more engaging and rewarding gameplay with the simple, but focused systems older games employ. You'll find joy in the way that the game's artists were able to create their vision with only a 320×200 resolution and 256-color palette, or only a couple thousand polygons.
In short, avoid modern AAA games like the plague. Just like the monstrosity that is the modern Hollywood scene or pop radio culture, AAA games have become an engine which sucks players out of all the money it can.
If you're not into false gameplay, addictive elements like loot boxes and micro-transactions in the face of extreme grinding, that doesn't mean you're not still into games.
> You may be engineering your own solution, but it's still the solution to someone else's problem. When you win, it's an empty feeling.
Speaking very personally... you might be playing sandbox games wrong: forget their goals. A while back, I decided that Factorio is Turing complete, even without the luxury of combiners... and I'm partway through an implementation of Eratosthenes' sieve? Rather than efficiency spreadsheets, I draw state diagrams :) Also inserters have nasty quirks that really make things fun
I have the same problem with pure sandbox games like Minecraft that I have with engineering games like Factorio. They're close enough to being simulations of the real thing (you can't argue that living on this planet isn't a - sometimes literal - sandbox!) that pretty soon I realise I might as well be putting the same effort into real life and getting tangible rewards.
Factorio nominally has an endgame "goal" (even completing it does not end the game) but it can be entirely ignored, and you are free to set whatever goals you feel like.
> I've been thinking a lot about finding a genre or mechanic that would still "work", but I find it sad that I cannot get the long term enjoyment without worry anymore from games as I could years ago.
Try some games that are designed more as "cinematic" experiences. This isn't a bulletproof strategy (cinematic games can have grindy elements), but it usually works.
Some new-ish recommendations:
• Hellblade
• Gris
• Life is Strange
• Journey
• Abzú
• Monument Valley
I also feel that Nintendo in particular has done a good job of avoiding the the stuff you describe, in their mainstream titles.
Actually, another strategy would be to just avoid any game that let's you purchase in-game items or currency, regardless of context.
I feel similarly these days about a lot of "gamey" games. However, I've still found story or environment driven games, where the gameplay is in service of something greater, to be worthwhile. If you haven't played them, I'd recommend:
- Psychonauts for something wacky and hilarious that will leave you satisfied and vaguely wistful that it's over.
- Nier: Automata for something gripping and tragic that will leave you wanting to find your loved ones, give them a hug, and let them know how much you appreciate them.
Damn, I've said this myself many times. I used to love gaming, but now, sitting in front of a computer and strategizing is something I get paid to do and spending a few precious hours doing it after work seems so stupid. I really miss the meditative aspect of getting absorbed in a game. I can still manage to play retro console games occasionally, but I really don't have the patience for much gaming these days.
>I've been thinking a lot about finding a genre or mechanic that would still "work", but I find it sad that I cannot get the long term enjoyment without worry anymore from games as I could years ago.
I've started playing games at lower difficulty than would be "right" for me, so that I can get through the story.
>I've been thinking a lot about finding a genre or mechanic that would still "work"
Have a look at planetary annihilation. Plus the community mod legions. No microtx, games against AI are decent fun etc. Well worth the price without being a crazy time sink - a quick AI game is like an hour.
I picked up DF a few years ago, and shortly after my girlfriend left for a two week trip. I had a bunch of stuff I was supposed to do around the house while she was gone, but I ended up going completely nocturnal and spent the entire two weeks in bed with my laptop. I didn't shower or brush my teeth and I only stopped playing long enough to pick up some takeout once or twice per day. I never finished any of the work I was supposed to do, but I did build a fortress on the side of a volcano with a gravity fed network of lava-powered forges, a defensive labyrinth leading to the front gate with a series of automated lava traps, and a dwarven atom smasher to catch any enemies that made it past the lava. I was working on a powered rail network when I lost most of my population to a series of riots and blood feuds triggered by a shortage of clean socks.
Every once in a while I get tempted to start playing again, but then I remember the look on my girlfriend's face when she came home and found me sitting in a pile of empty pizza boxes wearing nothing but underwear that I hadn't washed in two weeks.
Just one more belt*.
In earnest, I owe a lot to factorio, I started playing it towards the beginning of my programming career, and I was in a rough way, I could solve all the little toy problems my professors would throw at me, but the second there was anything big, I fell apart.
The fact of the matter is I was always doing everything in main, I had never really used functions for anything, I thought they were useless/extra work! And I eventually just had a moment playing factorio, looking at someone else's blueprint , and how neat and self contained it was, and how it had its organized and clear inputs and outputs... and it all just clicked. I'm much better at structuring my projects now and have very much become more function-centric in my work (I am actually currently falling for the clojure meme pretty heavily atm).
and the 17 release is out which changes a number of things so I'm playing it again and working out new designs while also thinking to myself "oh no.... oh no.... why am I up at 2am, I have work tomorrow, ok, bed time, right after I just finish this off....3am"
It will be the same story all over. It seems to fail at first and the devs are bored by the additional bureaucratic work. Then a wild weasel in suit appears..
I think it was that the statement that a "cancer scare" can "completely wipe out" someone that should be doing absolutely fine. That is not a working system.
Choosing to put it on Steam, or not, is completely orthogonal to that. At least, it should be.
I think the other response was flagged for language, but the included link was really interesting. I'd never even heard of medical "lodge practice" before seeing this video and reading through some of the references.
They're basically voluntary, mutual aid societies – many of them were basically small unions. The were strangled by the bigger, consolidated organizations:
The video is probably good for most audiences, but if (like me) you prefer to read, it looks like this is the short essay it's based on: http://www.freenation.org/a/f12l3.html
The references at the end of the essay include some really interesting historical accounts which I've enjoyed reading over the past few hours.
Video seems to hand wave the actual issues of healthcare which are treatment costs and scalability.
The only issue addressed was basically labor rate of doctors (and AMA artificially limiting the pool of doctors by raising standards).
The tone of the video was horrible -- no thanks. I don't need scary cartoons to tell me how to vote.
The end conclusion is basically "what if gov't is the problem?" without offering a solution (or even evidence based critique of modern systems -- what happened over 100 years ago is not the most relevant to my interests. As others have pointed out, the practice of medicine was a lot different then). Total waste of time and attention.
I honestly cannot understand how people look at the health care situation in America and think "if only health insurance had less restrictions, that would solve everything!"
Oof, can you really do an apples-to-apples comparison to healthcare in 1910 (before antibiotics) and healthcare today, though? If healthcare in 1910 cost $1 and a doctor poked you in the chest and said "You've got consumption; get your affairs in order." and healthcare in 2010 cost $1000 and a doctor poked you in the chest and said "You've got tuberculosis; take these antibiotics and you will probably live.", I don't think you can say healthcare got 1000x worse.
Would you make the same argument in favor of the cartelization of internet service providers? If in the 90s the ISPs banded together and got a government to prohibit competition, would we be asking if it's fair to compare "internet service measured in baud" with our much faster internet service of today? Humans are very clever; technology can improve even in the most oppressive regimes.
And the comments are actually useful – there’s a pinned link to a New York Times article published in 1910 which explains the argument at the time for cartelizing the industry.
But the non-pretty version of Dwarf Fortress is still free and will continue to be free. If that weren't the case there would probably be quite some backlash from the community.
https://archive.is/DhijM
I have not seen any credible direct quotes which show that any of the authors have distanced themselves from the second paper (the one with 6 authors including Hyun-Tak Kim).
My tentative read is that every author besides Kwon is likely thinking "this is not ready / not real, but if I pump the brakes on the hype train, Kwon will get all the credit in the unlikely event that it replicates quickly, so it's best to stay tight-lipped for the moment."