One of the first things that people think of when they think of Steve Jobs is his alleged “Reality Distortion Field”. Traditionally, that phrase referred to Steve’s ability to get Apple employees fired up about and on board with his latest idea.

Apple haters later applied the term pejoratively to his keynote addresses; supposedly the Stevenotes were the key to maintaining the hypnosis of the “Apple faithful”. But a less cynical look at his presentations gives one (well, at least it gives me) the impression that Steve was simply sincerely passionate about Apple’s products. He wasn’t trying to hoodwink Apple fans into thinking everything Apple did was amazing, he really thought it himself. And other than his constant use of superlatives, he never really said anything overly hyperbolic and got away with it unquestioned.

…With, I believe, one exception.

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It is written: “Every change which strengthens the protagonists requires a corresponding worsening of their challenges”. In Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, Harry Potter has been strengthened over his canon version to an extreme degree in many ways. And while he has already faced challenges that rival the worst of his challenges from the novels, I don’t feel like his challenges have yet been correspondingly worsened. I feel like there is a time soon coming, perhaps a long time, where “All is lost” won’t seem to cover it.

One of the first pieces of rationalist advice Eliezer and Harry gave us in this story was to always try to anticipate the worst possible thing happening, to try to undershoot reality, so that we are pleasantly surprised by what happens. With so many dominoes falling in the Taboo Tradeoffs arc, I think we should all do this for Methods now, before things get too much worse.

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Just to be very clear on this. No matter what we did, the Flash Player was not going to be available on Apple’s iOS anytime in the foreseeable future.

“No matter what we did, the Flash Player was not going to perform acceptably on any mobile device anytime in the foreseeable future.”

In general, users do not look to the web on mobile devices for finding and consuming rich content (such as games and applications).

There are a number of reasons for this, including:

Differences in screen sizes, resolution and interaction models between mobile devices and desktop PCs

“Flash doesn’t scale, literally or figuratively”

Generally slower, and higher latency network connections (which is [sic] often metered) on mobile devices, which makes it cumbersome, sometimes expensive, and sometimes impossible to repeatedly load rich content from the web on demand.

“Flash movies are way more bloated than equivalent native or HTML5 apps.”

The tight integration with the underlying operating systems that native applications provide.

“Flash movies look, act, and feel like crap on mobile devices.”

The tight integration between mobile app stores and the mobile operating systems, which removes most of the friction for discovering new content.

“Our attempt at cramming Flash movies into native apps didn’t work out so well for anyone.”

Essentially, users’ preferences to consume rich content on mobile devices via applications means that there is not as much need or demand for the Flash Player on mobile devices as there is on the desktop.

“Essentially, users’ preference to have both good experiences and good battery life means that there is no need or demand for the Flash Player on mobile devices.”

So, just to be very clear, contrary to what many have declared, Flash is not dead. It’s role and focus has shifted but we feel that it still fills important roles both on the web and mobile platforms.

“I am high as a kite.”

We feel that for the foreseeable future, Flash is particularly strong in delivering advanced video

“We’re very, very, very glad that the desktop browser vendors can’t agree on a common video codec…”

as well as providing a robust, and graphically rich gaming platform.

“…and we’re very, very, very thankful for Zynga’s success, regardless of its shady ethics.”

A lot of the things that you have done via Flash in the past, will increasingly be done via HTML5 and CSS3 directly in the browser.

…

I am not suggesting that all Flash content should or will be done in HTML5. You have to look at each project on a case by case basis and make a decision based on development costs, target platforms and user experience. Regardless, your customers are going to ask about HTML5, and you should put yourself in a position to best meet their needs, regardless of technology or platform.

“I’m not as high as I was five minutes ago. I’d really like you to think that Adobe isn’t as high as it was five years ago, but I’m not sure whether that’s true. We can all only hope.”

As soon as the first tower fell — or maybe even sooner — people knew that September 11, 2001 would be a day they’d remember for the rest of their lives. I myself remember the first class I had that morning. I remember some of the conversations I had with my girlfriend at the time.

But most of all, I remember how stupid everyone was.

People were idiots in the hours and days after the September 11 attacks. I mean, people are always idiots, but it was bad after September 11.

I remember how in my Trumpet Techniques class that morning, Emily Heern got a phone call from a relative, informing her that the Palestine Liberation Organization had taken responsibility and declared war on the United States. Such a notion is preposterous to anyone with an even cursory knowledge of Palestine’s recent history, but somehow that rumor got started and spread within an hour of the first attack.

I remember how one choir guy walked up and down the halls of the Fine Arts Building, talking loudly and resolutely on his cell phone to a relative who, didn’t you know?, had close ties¹ to the Pentagon, and this guy assured us all loudly that there would be “a major retaliatory response within the hour.”

I remember stories from Poplar Bluff of gas stations hoarding fuel and pawn shops hoarding weapons, and one in particular of a gas station owner who shut his station down because “The ground war will probably be fought through here and our tanks will need the gas.”

And this is to say nothing of the national news media, who, smack in the middle of the deadliest attack on US soil in sixty years, tried to characterize it with hilariously stupid and inappropriate puns like “911 — NATIONAL DAY OF EMERGENCY”.

A while back, Glenn Beck started a campaign he called the “9/12 Project”, a call to return to the way we felt after that fateful morning. He and many like him would have you believe that they want that because on that precious day, we were all, for once, united.

But if something united us after September 11, 2001, it was simple fear. We were all quite literally scared stupid. And whether they know it or not, all those that want us to return to 9/12’s mindset want it precisely because we were at our most fearful, most idiotic, most vulnerable, most impressionable.

We’ve willfully given up a lot of essential liberty in the name of a little temporary safety in the last ten years. We can’t put the twin towers back together as they were, and we can’t reclaim the lives that were lost that day, but if we ever hope to put this nation right again, we must take our mindset at least as far back as 9/10, if not considerably further.

We’re nowhere near being able to do that today. I fear for our country’s future.

1. I believe his father was the cousin of a guy who worked for a contractor who laid the concrete for the steps down to the nearby subway station — or, y’know, of some similarly dubious connection. ↩

If you are a software developer, please repeat after me:

I will never promise free stuff to my customers that I am not giving away starting right now.

No, really; you need to say this, over and over, until you believe it. Call it Heidbreder’s Litany if you’d like.

I will never promise free stuff to my customers that I am not giving away starting right now.

I will never promise that a product in early beta will remain free when it hits 1.0.

I will never ever promise that the next major release of my software will be free when that release is more than one week away.

I will never make a promise of any kind to my customers that I am not capable of keeping immediately.

If I make the foolish mistake of promising something to my customers, and I realize later that I am going to have to break it, I will, with great humility, constant self-deprecation, and profuse apology, preannounce that I will someday break the promise several weeks or months before actually breaking it.

Too many companies have made this very basic mistake and lived to deeply regret what happened with their customer relations when they broke their promise. They all had their defenders, who would fling accusations and platitudes at the complaining customers: “Cheapskates!” “Freeloaders who don’t want to pay a nickel for anything!” “Developers have to eat!”

Such defenses come from ignorance in the best cases and deliberate deception in the worst. None of these uproars are rooted in cheapness, in the desire to get everything for free. 

The seeds of all such discontent are sown when developers make promises they can’t keep. Then they blossom into revolt when they break their promises with zero warning. Other developers, who have the benefit of witnessing these unfortunate occasions, should acknowledge their true cause and vow to avoid repeating them by making no such promises themselves.

Modern Zelda games have a tendency to roughly follow a pattern:

1. Go to a village for an event.
2. Complete the event and get sent along your quest by the village chief.
3. Go through a (major or minor) dungeon.
4. Go through another (minor or major) dungeon.
5. Go back to step 1.

In The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, after the first cycle, you’re sent to a small village with six people living in six huts. You solve a little puzzle there that involves talking to everyone in the village. When you get it right, you’re told where to go next and dismissed by the chief.

Some gamers might leave the village immediately; but the more thorough and compulsive types like me go talk to the entire village again. The idea is that you might get earlier-than-intended access to a reward, a mini-game, or a hint about where that chief is sending you off to.

What actually happens, most of the time, is that you see a bunch of useless throwaway text the developers had to throw in to keep the game from breaking.

I was somewhat irritated as I pondered this fact while compulsively talking to all the residents of the village. Imagine my surprise when this last villager offers me something:

Hey! Guy! I hear you’re headin’ for that crazy tunnel.

If I were you, I’d say ixnay on the unneltay.

Ya wanna know why?

The game cartridge, enchanted with the malevolent spirit of the developers, then laughs evilly to itself as it presents me with the two options of this dialogue tree:

• No!
• Don’t care!

Choosing “No!” makes the villager beg you to reconsider, then ejects you from the conversation, giving you no option but to talk to him again, at which point he says the same thing and the game offers you the same choices.

Choosing “Don’t care!” makes the villager call you a jerk, then ejects you from the conversation, still giving you no option but to talk to him again, at which point he still says the same thing and the game still offers you the same choices.

Consider what has happened here. The behavior of checking all the conversation trees after an event has been intermittently reinforced — something interesting and novel happened, which is the primary form of reward in the explorative aspect of games that have such an aspect — ensuring that I will continue talking to every villager multiple times in the future.

But the reinforcement is actually a punishment, and a form of ridicule at that. The game developers have actually just made fun of me for trying to get the most out of their game, and they’ve done it in such a way as to make sure I will make myself available for any future such humiliation they should wish to dole out.

And so, like the rat in the Skinner box, I will continue pushing the Response Lever that is this game and all video games. But my explorative side has not escaped unscathed, and I may think twice before again trying to enjoy any future Zelda titles too much.¹

1. This sentence, like this entire entry, is written with tongue firmly in cheek.