6 ms·

'One game that the Stasi did actively seek to keep out of circulation was the strategy game "Kremlin," which had been developed by the small Swiss publisher Fat

'One game that the Stasi did actively seek to keep out of circulation was the strategy game "Kremlin," which had been developed by the small Swiss publisher Fata Morgana Games. In "Kremlin," the player takes over the role of a Soviet politician who then fights others to become the head of the party. One Stasi file notes that the game "contradicts the interests of the GDR due to its anti-Soviet statements."'

baybal2 8y ago
I hope that readers will realise more things than just how ridiculous every day life was in a red country. When state security dominated everything, everything that it didn't like became a security issue, and everything it liked too! Think of a brand of children candy being labelled "counterrevolutionary," a design of apartment called "communistic," and there was even a "state security conscious way to drive a car." For few Western people that ventured into bloc countries, the experience was just mind breaking. I remember from some memoirs, one guy lauded why in the world a state security officer has to review and issue "state security licenses" for owning a toy air plane, buying a typewriter, or reasons for his child to go through "state security exam" to attend a club. Think just how petty the state security dominated state was, and then think if the currently forming political establishment in the West went by further. - Terrorism tax https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/02/ukgov_moots_tax_for_uncooperative_tech_firms_over_terror_content/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/02/ukgov_moots_tax_for... - "national security tax" - well, that one was shot down - Rapescan scanners on public transit - Three letter agencies having nothing better to do than snoop on facebooks of teenage girls - Being jailed for owning nitric acid - Being detained for making a clockwork, or, well being effectively jailed for life for owning a "terrorist wristwatch" - Being denied boarding a flights for owning a "terrorist radio" - Havala being called "terrorism banking" - the very term of "cyberterrorism" - "Chador tax" in Europe - TSA and DHS tearing down laptops, and stealing "not-state-security-approved" purchases from Chinese dollar stores. Not to mention, any radio gear from abroad. - All kinds of "terrorism experts," and three letter agency bureaucrats having the best time ever gaining promotions in Western countries
- C1sc0cat 8y ago
  Acid in the UK is being used in disfiguring attacks and as a replacement for settling scores with knives.
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    I've only heard of acid attacks in the context of Muslim "honour" reprisals. So I did a little research. This BBC article from 2011 details some statistics on "honour" attacks: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16014368 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16014368. Including that London's Metropolitan Police ("MET") reported about 500 Islamic honour related acid attacks for 2010. Now this search: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22honour+attack%22+acid+Muslim https://www.google.com/search?q=%22honour+attack%22+acid+Mus... returns as the first hit an article in which the MET claims [1] that Islamic honour attacks are basically a myth. I wonder how the MET managed to report up to 500 per year to 2010 (first link above), then only one for the subsequent 15 years [1]? It's curious that there are charities set up to aid acid attack victims[2] which report that in relative terms a lot of "honour attacks" happen in Pakistan; and that with a large UK Pakistani population there's only one attack in London in 15 years. So, what's going on there. Obviously it's fantastic if somehow such "honour attacks" were reduced by nearly 100% in one year yet highly disturbing if the police report that and it's not true. Aside from that question, what I did find is a huge increase in use by gangs and a much wider use than I imagined for "revenge attacks" (spurned lovers, stalkers, etc.). [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/5d38c003-c54a-4513-a369-f9eae0d52f91 https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/5d38c003-c54a-4513-a3... [2] Eg http://asfpakistan.org/ http://asfpakistan.org/, https://asti.org.uk https://asti.org.uk.
    - vidarh 8y ago
      > This BBC article from 2011 details some statistics on "honour" attacks: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16014368 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16014368. Including that London's Metropolitan Police ("MET") reported about 500 Islamic honour related acid attacks for 2010. The article does not say Islamic, nor acid-attacks in relation to the 495 attacks. The article says "so-called honour attacks" and goes on to say: > Honour attacks are punishments on people, usually women, for acts deemed to have brought shame on their family. > Such attacks can include acid attacks, abduction, mutilations, beatings and in some cases, murder. In other words, it says nothing about how many acid-attacks were included among those 495, and does not tie it to specific religions. Honour attacks are more strongly correlated to specific cultural ties than religion. It is likely a substantial majority of those have muslim perpetrators (because the South Asian communities that are over-represented in "honour" related crime are majority muslim), but certainly not all. > I wonder how the MET managed to report up to 500 per year to 2010 (first link above), then only one for the subsequent 15 years [1]? Because you're comparing all honour attacks of any type to honour-related acid-attacks.
glaberficken 8y ago
totally off topic: unrelated to reading this on HN, 5 mins ago I was googling "why are some clouds darker than others" (it's a cloudy day and I was looking out of my window at work, waiting for some data query to run) which led me to an article about the way light scatters off of water droplets in the clouds. This article mentioned Fata Morgana as another example of atmospheric phenomena related to light scattering. Not having heard about Fata Morgana before, I dutifully proceeded to read the wikipedia article about it. When I finished, my query still hadn't finished running, so what do you do, check HN front page of course. And I open this post and there it is... >"strategy game "Kremlin," which had been developed by the small Swiss publisher Fata Morgana Games" talk about coincidences...
- fnordian_slip 8y ago
  Of course this is even more off-topic, but I wanted you to know that there is a name for that. It is the Baader Meinhof Phenomenon[0] or frequency illusion[1]. [0]:https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Baader-Meinhof_phenomenon https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Baader-Meinhof_phenomenon [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases#Frequency_illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases#Frequ...
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    I don't think they're describing Baader-Meinhof illusion, instead it sound like the phenomenon I know as "Feynman's grandmother" whereby we credit a coincidence with a degree of magic because we fail to notice the frequency compared to non-coincidences. The phenomenon plays out something like this: If you recall all the times you read something, and the subsequent article has no unexpected relationship in key concepts then you'll see it's just a normal statistical occurrence rather than something spooky and notable.
    - c3534l 8y ago
      I think he's actually describing a much deeper phenomenon called a "coincidence" in which two things occur which are related in some way other than by causality. This strange phenomena is usually attributed to a concept known by the phrase "chance" which is deeply rooted in probability theory, but top scienticians and psychological probability computationists are still studying this mysterious phenomenon.
Kurtz79 8y ago
I wonder how "Papers, please" would have been received.
- dirktheman 8y ago
  There's a game called 'Papers, please' where you play a bureaucratic border guard: http://papersplea.se/ http://papersplea.se/ It's free and actually pretty good!
  - anoncake 8y ago
    I think that's what Kurtz meant.
  - the_af 8y ago
    "Papers, Please" is not free: $9.99, as stated in your link. It's indeed an awesome game.
- sgift 8y ago
  Probably with an invitation to Hohenschönhausen for whoever dared to bring it into GDR.
  - elcapitan 8y ago
    For stealing the official Stasi training software.

baybal2 8y ago

I hope that readers will realise more things than just how ridiculous every day life was in a red country. When state security dominated everything, everything that it didn't like became a security issue, and everything it liked too! Think of a brand of children candy being labelled "counterrevolutionary," a design of apartment called "communistic," and there was even a "state security conscious way to drive a car." For few Western people that ventured into bloc countries, the experience was just mind breaking. I remember from some memoirs, one guy lauded why in the world a state security officer has to review and issue "state security licenses" for owning a toy air plane, buying a typewriter, or reasons for his child to go through "state security exam" to attend a club. Think just how petty the state security dominated state was, and then think if the currently forming political establishment in the West went by further. - Terrorism tax https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/02/ukgov_moots_tax_for_uncooperative_tech_firms_over_terror_content/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/02/ukgov_moots_tax_for... - "national security tax" - well, that one was shot down - Rapescan scanners on public transit - Three letter agencies having nothing better to do than snoop on facebooks of teenage girls - Being jailed for owning nitric acid - Being detained for making a clockwork, or, well being effectively jailed for life for owning a "terrorist wristwatch" - Being denied boarding a flights for owning a "terrorist radio" - Havala being called "terrorism banking" - the very term of "cyberterrorism" - "Chador tax" in Europe - TSA and DHS tearing down laptops, and stealing "not-state-security-approved" purchases from Chinese dollar stores. Not to mention, any radio gear from abroad. - All kinds of "terrorism experts," and three letter agency bureaucrats having the best time ever gaining promotions in Western countries

C1sc0cat 8y ago
Acid in the UK is being used in disfiguring attacks and as a replacement for settling scores with knives.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  I've only heard of acid attacks in the context of Muslim "honour" reprisals. So I did a little research. This BBC article from 2011 details some statistics on "honour" attacks: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16014368 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16014368. Including that London's Metropolitan Police ("MET") reported about 500 Islamic honour related acid attacks for 2010. Now this search: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22honour+attack%22+acid+Muslim https://www.google.com/search?q=%22honour+attack%22+acid+Mus... returns as the first hit an article in which the MET claims [1] that Islamic honour attacks are basically a myth. I wonder how the MET managed to report up to 500 per year to 2010 (first link above), then only one for the subsequent 15 years [1]? It's curious that there are charities set up to aid acid attack victims[2] which report that in relative terms a lot of "honour attacks" happen in Pakistan; and that with a large UK Pakistani population there's only one attack in London in 15 years. So, what's going on there. Obviously it's fantastic if somehow such "honour attacks" were reduced by nearly 100% in one year yet highly disturbing if the police report that and it's not true. Aside from that question, what I did find is a huge increase in use by gangs and a much wider use than I imagined for "revenge attacks" (spurned lovers, stalkers, etc.). [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/5d38c003-c54a-4513-a369-f9eae0d52f91 https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/5d38c003-c54a-4513-a3... [2] Eg http://asfpakistan.org/ http://asfpakistan.org/, https://asti.org.uk https://asti.org.uk.
  - vidarh 8y ago
    > This BBC article from 2011 details some statistics on "honour" attacks: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16014368 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16014368. Including that London's Metropolitan Police ("MET") reported about 500 Islamic honour related acid attacks for 2010. The article does not say Islamic, nor acid-attacks in relation to the 495 attacks. The article says "so-called honour attacks" and goes on to say: > Honour attacks are punishments on people, usually women, for acts deemed to have brought shame on their family. > Such attacks can include acid attacks, abduction, mutilations, beatings and in some cases, murder. In other words, it says nothing about how many acid-attacks were included among those 495, and does not tie it to specific religions. Honour attacks are more strongly correlated to specific cultural ties than religion. It is likely a substantial majority of those have muslim perpetrators (because the South Asian communities that are over-represented in "honour" related crime are majority muslim), but certainly not all. > I wonder how the MET managed to report up to 500 per year to 2010 (first link above), then only one for the subsequent 15 years [1]? Because you're comparing all honour attacks of any type to honour-related acid-attacks.

glaberficken 8y ago

totally off topic: unrelated to reading this on HN, 5 mins ago I was googling "why are some clouds darker than others" (it's a cloudy day and I was looking out of my window at work, waiting for some data query to run) which led me to an article about the way light scatters off of water droplets in the clouds. This article mentioned Fata Morgana as another example of atmospheric phenomena related to light scattering. Not having heard about Fata Morgana before, I dutifully proceeded to read the wikipedia article about it. When I finished, my query still hadn't finished running, so what do you do, check HN front page of course. And I open this post and there it is... >"strategy game "Kremlin," which had been developed by the small Swiss publisher Fata Morgana Games" talk about coincidences...

fnordian_slip 8y ago
Of course this is even more off-topic, but I wanted you to know that there is a name for that. It is the Baader Meinhof Phenomenon[0] or frequency illusion[1]. [0]:https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Baader-Meinhof_phenomenon https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Baader-Meinhof_phenomenon [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases#Frequency_illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases#Frequ...
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  I don't think they're describing Baader-Meinhof illusion, instead it sound like the phenomenon I know as "Feynman's grandmother" whereby we credit a coincidence with a degree of magic because we fail to notice the frequency compared to non-coincidences. The phenomenon plays out something like this: If you recall all the times you read something, and the subsequent article has no unexpected relationship in key concepts then you'll see it's just a normal statistical occurrence rather than something spooky and notable.
  - c3534l 8y ago
    I think he's actually describing a much deeper phenomenon called a "coincidence" in which two things occur which are related in some way other than by causality. This strange phenomena is usually attributed to a concept known by the phrase "chance" which is deeply rooted in probability theory, but top scienticians and psychological probability computationists are still studying this mysterious phenomenon.

Kurtz79 8y ago

I wonder how "Papers, please" would have been received.

dirktheman 8y ago
There's a game called 'Papers, please' where you play a bureaucratic border guard: http://papersplea.se/ http://papersplea.se/ It's free and actually pretty good!
- anoncake 8y ago
  I think that's what Kurtz meant.
- the_af 8y ago
  "Papers, Please" is not free: $9.99, as stated in your link. It's indeed an awesome game.
sgift 8y ago
Probably with an invitation to Hohenschönhausen for whoever dared to bring it into GDR.
- elcapitan 8y ago
  For stealing the official Stasi training software.