Interesting side note: Coleco had a version of Slither for their gaming console which shipped with a "Roller Controller" which was pretty innovative at the time. ColecoVision crashed and burned, too, of course.

A relative worked there and so my family had access to many prototype games that never made it into stores. But I know for a fact "Slither" was on the shelves as my copy was a retail package. I enjoyed playing it at the time, especially with the track ball.

I fight the left because of Venezuela, Cuba, and every place else where Marxist ideas have infected the minds of the masses to give assent to dictatorship. To me, the left will never conjure anything other than the ideas of misery, starvation, political violence, and destruction of life on a massive scale. The Soviet Union, the gulags, China, North Korea. Not one single success story.

You have a very narrow view of the left. How about civil rights, votes for women, basic protection from horrific working conditions?

How about the fight against absolute monarchy. How about the American Constitution and the Founding Fathers? Where does the term 'left' even come from? Who were Thomas Paine and Jefferson inspired by?

The long march towards basic decency in western society has been the task of 'the left' since the Enlightenment and maybe before.

EDIT:

> The Soviet Union, the gulags, China, North Korea.

To anyone on the libertarian left these are all abhorrences. I'm much more of a centrist than most who would identify with the left but - unless you swallow the narrative of state socialism whole, it's hard to include these examples in any authentic history of the left.

(not that that stopped a large percentage of leftist thinkers defending them way past the point of decency - to their eternal shame. Read up on the split between Sartre and Camus and the split between Orwell and most of the rest of the British left)

EDIT 2

> and every place else where Marxist ideas have infected the minds of the masses to give assent to dictatorship

Luckily there's no such thing as right-wing dictatorships, eh?

This article is genius is the way it depends on layers upon layers of propaganda. It's freaking brilliant--the underlying assumption that only leftist ideals are "correct" and "good" and thus everyone who voted against such ideals must have somehow been manipulated into doing so or is not in their right mind. That's the too-clever communist brain right there--write an article to promote leftism by rejecting all the intellectual challenges to it and then accuse the right of manipulating technology against the only true good in the world. Never mind the true track record of leftism!

Brexit--the people have had enough of unelected EU demagogues telling them what they can and can't do in their own country. The problem is, the UK is probably 30 years too far gone, but we'll see.

US--Trump bested an ethically compromised internationalist after 8 years of Americans suffering through a different ethically compromised internationalist. There's no tricks there, it's just that Americans finally woke up to the fact they they were being sold down the river and getting zero in return. Plus, anyone who has been paying attention knows that the Clintons are like Bond villains in that they have succumbed to influence peddling via their foundation and they are implicated in many questionable deaths whose timing could only have helped their cause. In short, the Clintons are criminals, clever ones, but still criminals.

On the matter of Reddit--I don't think the centipedes are paid shills. I have no evidence to back that other than the fact that I have been involved in other grassroots movements and I can tell the difference between astroturf and the real deal. The people on The_Donald are the real deal, and they fought hard to even have a voice at all, what with the owners of reddit always manipulating the underlying tech to marginalize them. That the The_Donald even still exists on Reddit is because if it got banned, approximately half of Reddit's user base would migrate elsewhere overnight. The_Donald is followed by more people than nearly the rest of Reddit combined, although the people who run that site have done their best to cover up the facts. And yet, The_Donald doesn't get the ban hammer because to do so would put them in extremely hot water with their advertisers and investors. Reddit needs Trump supporters far more than Trump supporters need Reddit, however--and that's something that everyone in smug Silicon Valley would be wise to remember--I'm looking at you, Apple, Facebook, and Google--you know you tried to influence the election outcome, too. We all know. So beware.

As far the allegations about Jews running the world--I have no idea who runs the world. I grew up in NY State and I can say with some certainty that Jews and Jewish interests have an undue influence on politics and commerce which is outsized compared to their overall numbers. It's not some grand conspiracy, it's just that like all groups, the insiders would rather deal with like-minded folks versus non-liked minded folks because it guarantees their own success while diminishing competition. It's a mind-set as old as civilization. It's not anti-semitic to observe this, it is only anti-semitic to bring up the fact that certain Jews are far-left and that they, like Soros, are promoting a far-left agenda that runs against the political and economic interests of literally everyone else on the planet. You can't say that global internationalism is anything but anti-democratic at the local level. Just look at Agenda 21, or at any globalist initiative, and you see what I'm talking about. It all looks benign, but slowly and surely, individual rights are being removed as the ownership of everything of any real value is being trickled to the very top. All the while the left proclaims that they are doing this for the people--which is the big lie the left has always used while robbing regular people of everything.

Again, I don't think this is some Jewish conspiracy--there are plenty of good Jewish folks who are caught on the wrong side of it like the rest of us. Maybe it's an inner-circle kind of thing amongst billionaires? There are many rings, many facets and many competing interests, I'm sure. But the one common trend is the continued disenfranchisement of the regular citizens both politically and economically. We simply can't have any more of that.

43 here. You might think you still want to be coding into your 50s, but I am here to warn you that the matter is highly subjective. I'm noticing that each subsequent job search after 40 is a little tougher and rejections are for silly reasons now (because you're old isn't ever one of them). The laws won't protect you, so forget about that.

No matter what you think, you won't be as employable in your 40s and 50s as you were in your 20s--being young in the tech industry means you can be exploited and exploitation is the #1 factor. They know young people will work a ton of extra hours for no extra pay to gain experience, to try and prove themselves, or whatever.

I recently talked to a colleague who is 62 and still coding. He is worried about the next seven years as he is not ready to retire (not financially ready, that is). His department is going through downsizing and he is trying to position himself in another area that isn't likely to drop people. He rightly realizes that finding a new developer job at 62 will be next to impossible. It's all a big chess game after 40 so be prepared.

Unlike the codist, I'm sure I don't want to be doing this work after 50. I have a plan for getting out. This year, because of a family obligation, I took some months off. During that time, I did a trial run of how to 'retire' from software development. There were quite a few surprises for me and it didn't look like I had expected. Finding an alternative career after 20+ years as a developer is do-able: There are roles that require attention to detail and analytical skills, but that don't require coding, for example.

I won't go into detail, but I will say I rejected downshifting to a non-developer role even though I had a couple offers at 80-90% of what I was pulling down as a developer. Instead, I'm headed back to doing development for another 5-7 years, but with more knowledge about how to proceed in later years. I want to retire around age 50 and am working on having the passive income to do so. I may need to work part-time in odd jobs as well, but I predict I won't be a developer in my 50s.

If you're older, you had better understand that the next downturn could very likely take your job and getting another one will be hard. For all the happy talk about how great the job market is and how age doesn't matter, I beg to differ. That "great" can change insanely quickly. There is more competition in our field than ever before and the only thing that creates job security for us is being able to actually write code and get crap done and even that is of thin value because companies don't care: they see us as another commodity. To management, it doesn't hardly matter how good a coder you are, companies are happy to accept fungible, mediocre people as long as the systems sort of work.

The last thing I will leave you with is that you don't know how long you're going to live. If you have any ambition to do anything in life besides work, you need to get going on those plans right now. Dropping dead from a sudden heart attack or stroke does happen to a lot of people.

Some of us, for financial reasons (like emigration, bad luck, divorce, child support, or all the aforementioned) will be coding until we drop dead or get kicked out and can't get work.

Trust me, most of us in this situation are probably acutely and painfully aware of the nightmare scenario, but we've got the tiger by the tail and can't realistically let go. Such is life.

If you read about "Yellow Journalism" and how newspapers were used to accomplish things rich people wanted to happen, you will realize that Americans, and humans in general, have been subject to mass manipulation via the media for centuries.

I do know about that, and find it interesting. And that stuff still goes on, of course, and likely always will.

But there's a lot of other stuff also going on today. It feels more organic, rather than intentionally directed, but I think the effects on the collective mind are still huge.

The clickbait articles that don't have any underlying motivation other than getting people to click on them (along with those that do). The web of people out there providing each other confirmation of truly nuts conspiracy theories, whether it be "the Sandy Hook massacre of children was a government hoax" or "thousands of children have gotten autism from the measles vaccine". Youtube comment threads.

There's no cohesive agenda behind a lot of this stuff, and no ultimate benefit achieved by any party. It's more like these things are memetic prions, folding onto each other and interacting in their unthinking inanimate way, having significant effects on the host but without any intention driving them.

Well the whole article came off as a humble brag, so there's that.

He should just start collecting Porsches or flying airplanes or something. Jeez.

Can't say I agree. I think the commenters taking that tack are maybe adding a filter or two of their own to what the author is saying and being reactive to the less interesting parts of the article. That leads to a somewhat boring, if also exciting, round-of-denunciation sort of thread. (Boring-plus-exciting is the alcohol-plus-amphetamines of internet forums.)

They're also ignoring the ways the author is already piling on himself. I think that's a shallow reading and a bit harsh. The common trope in our culture is for the rest of us to become hostile when someone with money goes on about their problems ('what's he got to complain about?'). I get why, but it's an oversimplifying reflex that doesn't breed good discussion. Human lives are complex things.

IMO the more interesting parts of the article have to do with tradeoffs and unintended consequences. Doing what it takes to achieve a goal, including a socially laudable/enviable goal, can leave you stuck and/or damaged in other ways. These dynamics are more interesting than just seeing someone as 'an asshole'.

This is in no way related to this comment but I just wanted to say keep up the good work. I read Paul Graham's summary of you and my comment came across as mean and stupid. Anyway to say the least, moderating comments can't be easy and you take every one of them seriously. Thank you.

Thanks! Your comment didn't seem mean or stupid because you were defending something positive. But it's great for the community, and one of my favorite things on HN, when someone takes a second look and a more nuanced response arises. So your responses here (both of them) are a gift.

I feel like the denunciations aren't specific to anything in particular that he said, but part a general trend among some commentors of this site. When I read someone's personal reflections, I just listen to what they have to say and accept that they've shared how an experience felt to them.

It was a fascinating read written by someone whose outlook is much removed from mine. I'd like to think that the silent majority of readers come away enriched with a new perspective, and there are only a few vocal folks who need to judge someone's lived experience as being "wrong".

Any time I hear about a trend among HN users I ask myself whether the same trend exists among human beings in general.

My personal opinion about the weeks and months leading up to 9/11 is that the neocon Bush Administration wanted it to happen. That is not the same as orchestrating it, but they quashed certain investigations at certain times, made it hard for intelligence agencies and the FBI to do their jobs, etc. They did this because the "peace dividend" would have been upon us and they needed a new enemy to fight. There is too much money in military and security contracts to ever let the US actually wind down the machine. Or maybe they did it because the nation was on the cusp of a financial collapse due to the "dot com" collapse that was taking place. Either way, the reasons were economic.

For every privacy invading technology you see, I will show you a company that lobbied for it to exist. You want examples? Level III systems and those idiotic naked body scanners at the airports. The Real ID Act is another--nothing wrong with most state issued driver's licenses, they just weren't expensive enough.

If you want to be free then you have to accept certain dangers in life. It's not like the tech put in place is doing anything to make you safer, anyways--it's only purpose is to suck billions of dollars out of taxpayers and concentrate that wealth in the hands of those who know how to go out and force it in their direction. When we inevitably suffer more attacks, it's all "we did our best."

I hold out very little hope for any of this to change, but we as citizens need to keep resisting anyways. Gut some government agencies, cut the budgets, stop the revolving door of lobbyists.

I'm not sure if I should upvote this or not... I mean, I went to a "less competitive" college to start out with, then ended up at a major university for a masters and then another major university for a PhD. I have definitely been upwardly mobile due to my education and it didn't cause me much debt. No, I'm not a 1%er, but my station in life improved greatly from the humble place I started from. That's the American Dream, right? No guarantees, just maybe a chance at something better.

I would stress about all these legacy rich folks--a lot of them don't amount to much. They party, do drugs, flame out young.

And then again, in some ways I totally agree with what you're saying--it isn't fair to tell a kid they can become a CEO when in fact the people who become CEOs are picked from a very select, elite group.

> he's putting the people of the United States first and foremost, a concept that hasn't happened in decades

This is perhaps true for ~60 million voters. Extrapolating that to the "people of the United States" is a stretch. It's like saying Obama put the people first because insuring 16M people promotes general well-being of society --some truth, but discounting perspectives of a large portion of "the people." It's more true that we haven't seen a president hold true to his base in decades (e.g. Obama didn't close Guantanamo).

> quite clear there is racial inclusion going on

As a person of color, I know several people of color who support Trump but I have not seen statements or policies that read or sound inclusive to me. Citations?

> Identity politics are garbage.

I agree, stand-by to be down-voted into oblivion. Besides journalists should report the news instead of being the news or creating non-issues as in a lot of cases. I call it the oprahfication of the commons.