I think it's fine to discuss solutions to hypothetical future problems as long as it's clear that these are hypothetical future problems you're talking about, not present reality.
In many of these discussions that line seems to get blurred and I start to get the impression people are using the specter of a vague, poorly understood hypothetical future problem to argue for concrete societal changes now.
When I was in my early 20s I used to think I was very clever for pointing out apparent hypocrisies. Now I realize how easily that devolves into “you are imperfect therefore you may never criticize anything”
Americans can never call out human rights abuses because of slavery. The British can never because of colonialism. Period. Forever.
If you find this line of argumentation compelling there’s no discussing anything with you.
Tractors largely replaced human labour in farming about a hundred years ago. Should we have started taxing tractors?
I really have difficulties seeing AI as anything else than yet another type of machinery. If your argument is "but it's replacing ALMOST ALL human labour" - well, the same argument was valid for tractors a hundred years ago (when almost everyone was employed in agriculture).
You claim to know, yet you still make statements that are obviously foolish given said knowledge? Imagine applying this logic to other industries:
> The existence of folding phones inundates phone manufactures with orders for devices with unimportant luxury features when there are people who are struggling to afford even a basic entry level phone. Having money doesn't make your needs more important. We should ban folding phones to make entry-level phones more accessible to poor people.
Do you agree the paragraph above is unreasonable and that trying to implement it in the real world would make things worse for everyone? If so, why did you just propose the same thing for medical care a couple comments back?
That's what I'm so curious about; I see this all the time where when the subject matter is emotionally or politically charged people revert to this "there's a fixed-sized pie and I want to make sure I get a big piece" economic model, even while appearing in other contexts to understand that that's not how things work.
If hypothetically they did have pure intentions, would that make it okay?
I know very little about the politics of India, so I have no idea whether what you said is an objective assessment or if it's just the political talking points of one particular side, but at least in the US I find it very disappointing how the mainstream political opposition to creeping authoritarianism is often "Wow this is terrible, those guys totally shouldn't have that much power." with the unstated implication being "Give it to me instead. I'm a good guy; you can trust me."
I much prefer to emphasize principles which hold regardless of which tribe happens to be in power at the moment. In this case the overriding principle being that device owners should have ultimate control over the software running on their phone - not companies, and certainly not governments. Forcing people to run a particular piece of software on their phones is simply not a power the government should have, regardless of how good their intentions.
> knew about the dangers and repeatedly chose to do literally nothing about it
The dangers of... hot coffee? Yeah, everyone knows that. That's exactly why they shouldn't have lost to the extent that they did.
It's tragic for the person involved obviously; I get why emotionally the court would feel sympathy for the victim. But objectively speaking its pretty ridiculous for the legal system to be awarding punitive damages for companies exposing people to normal, reasonable risks that everyone encounters as part of everyday life. It creates a culture where businesses have to treat grown adults like children for fear of huge fines if something goes wrong.
At worst McDonald's was probably like 10% responsible for the incident but they got treated like they were 100,000% responsible.
(The jury actually did find the woman was partially responsible, it was the judge that decided on the absurd damages amount. It later got reduced and settled out of court so all in all I think the system ultimately worked okay despite the judge's ridiculous initial decision.)
Edit: I misread, it was actually the jury that made the initial ridiculous punitive damages ruling, the judge was the one who reduced it later before it got settled out of court for an undisclosed (possibly still ridiculously high) amount.
> We programmers are currently living through the devaluation of our craft.
Valuation is fundamentally connected to scarcity. 'Devaluation' is just negative spin for making it plentyful.
When cicumstances changed to make something less scarce, one cannot expect to get the same value for it because of past valuation. That is just rent-seeking.
This seems like a fairly reasonable UX improvement. Unless I'm missing anything, it doesn't seem like this has nefarious intent, it's just there so that when a user clicks a link, they see the content as quickly as possible.
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It's astonishing how quickly discussion disintegrates when Musk is mentioned on HN. He really is such a divisive figure, with incredibly polarised language both in support and against him.
Normal reasoned arguments are just absent here. Sometimes when two people disagree, they can still have a nuanced conversation/argument about it. But not about Musk.
There are some opinions in this thread that I vehemently disagree with, but it's not worth escalating by adding my opinion to the pile.
It reminds me of that phenomenon where you read the newspaper and notice an article in your domain of expertise and it's riddled with errors! Then you turn the page, read an article about something else, and completely trust it. You somehow didn't transfer the knowledge that the newspaper is inaccurate to the new domain.
It makes me wonder what other discussions on HN (and elsewhere) are completely devoid of nuance and reason, but I just don't notice it.
Technology has a ratchet effect at scale - as a solution becomes widely adopted, it switches from being a convenience to being a necessity, because people start building more stuff on top of it. It's as true of to-the-minute accurate clocks as it is of smartphone banking.
You can still run a version of Word from 2004. It's fine, if all you need is to write some thoughts down for yourself. But the moment you need to collaborate with other people via a Word document, you'll find it difficult without the modern version with all its user-hostile aspects - and more importantly, other people will find you difficult to work with.
Same applies to other software, web and smartphones, and to everything else in life - the further you deviate from the mainstream, the costlier it is for you. Deviate too much, and you just become a social outcast.
> It was exactly "Open source" that enabled Google to dominate the smartphone landscape.
The financial interest may have preferred a licensing model, but either way, it was the financial interest that actually built a ton of this software. Linux isn't unpopular with businesses because of its license model. It is healthy because it found ways to plug into financial interest.
The FSF will always push licensing models while ignoring financial interest, basically abandoning users and businesses. There are how many billion smartphone users on Earth, and the FSF expects volunteer programmers and volunteer donations recruited on one of the worst websites I have ever seen to carry the load? Give me a break.
I know we are not supposed to talk about karma (and therefore a downvote ironically may be appropriate on this comment), but I agree vote behaviour on HN lately shows a still-small but growing tendency toward suppressive downvoting.
This seems to happen generally for two reasons: Even a neutral comment is evaluated for what stance it most closely aligns with, and then downvoted to suppress the opposing view just in case. Or alternatively, a comment that appears low-key combative (but really isn't directly so) gets downvoted in an attempt to ensure harmony.
Both moves to me have "culture war vibes", and come from either adopting those habits or feeling very tired from strife.
I think it's increasingly easy to fall into either bracket, but let's not do that on HN! If a comment is generally polite enough, the only bar to meet is adding new information or new thought into a conversation. None of us come here to be pandered to, and getting challenged by viewpoints that force you to consider the corner cases of your own views is half the fun.
From a business perspective, wouldn't taking these issues seriously harm growth? What sort of fines and punishment are making sure invectives are aligned with good behavior? Is any of the management going to jail?
If you want the largest businesses in the world to be responsible for the harm they bring to society, you need to make sure the management and profit motives are both aligned with taking on that responsibility. The more responsible companies of the world axiomatically don't get to be the biggest, because they will be outcompeted by the companies that choose to not be responsible.
> The only difference between your phone and China's social credit system is that China tells you what they're doing. We pretend our algorithmic reputation scores are just “user experience features.” At least Beijing admits they're gamifying human behavior.
Um no. That is not the only difference by a LONG SHOT.
If I want to evaluate whether or not I want to involve myself with you, in any capacity, then that negotiation is between you and me. I can ask for references. I can ask for a credit check. I can go pay for a police background check. I can read public review sites. Or, I might decide that because you listen to country & western music you're not a real person and I can't know you and leave the vetting at that.
Consequentially, however, that dealing impacts our relationship and none other. You might find other people who don't care about the same "social credit criteria" that I do and you might find yourself dealing with them instead.
That's kind of the beauty of this thing we call "freedom." Anyone gets to choose who they want to deal with (or not) and make their own individual choices. The "systems" they opt in are always opt in (or at least they should be).
The difference between a government "social credit" system and individuals (businesses or people) vetting other individuals based on their own chosen requirements is force.
A government system mandates this across society in a broad authoritarian sweep. Get on the bad side of "the party" and now you are a social pariah and will not have any luck finding anyone who wants to deal with you, country music lovers be damned, because it is forced upon everyone. A business has no choice but to apply "the" system because if they don't they get punished. It is not opt-in, it is a one-sized-fits-all mandated by force of law system that removes individual discretion and choice from the equation.
That's a LOT different than just "we're upfront about it."
Furthermore, while I appreciate when authoritarians are honest about their violations of basic human rights and freedoms, that doesn't suddenly make what they are doing OK. I don't want to deal with a thief who is honest about their thievery any more than I want to deal with one who tries to hide it.
I think the conversation needs to change from "can't run software of our choice" to "can't participate in society without an apple or google account". I have been living with a de-googled android phone for a number of years, and it is getting harder and harder, while at the same time operating without certain "apps" is becoming more difficult.
For example, by bank (abn amro) still allows online banking on desktop via a physical auth device, but they are actively pushing for login only via their app. I called their support line for a lost card, and had to go through to second level support because I didn't have the app. If they get their way, eventually an apple or google account will be mandatory to have a bank account with them.
My kid goes to a school that outsourced all communication via an app. They have a web version, but it's barely usable. The app doesn't run without certain google libs installed. Again, to participate in school communication about my kid effectively requires an apple or google account.
I feel like the conversation we should be having is that we are sleepwalking into a world where to participate in society you must have an account with either apple or google. If you decide you don't want a relationship with either of those companies you will be extremely disadvantaged.
Only competition can provide a solution. We have lost sight of this principle even though all Western democracies are built on the idea of separation of powers, and making it hard for any one faction of elites to gain full control and ruin things for everyone else. Make them fight with each other, let them get a piece of the pie, but never all of it. That's why we have multiple branches of government, multiple parties etc. That's why we have markets with many firms instead of monopolies.
There has never been a utopian past and there will never be a utopian future. The past was riddled with despotism and many things that the average man or woman today would consider horrific. The basic principle of democratic society is to prevent those things from recurring by pitting elite factions against each other. Similarly business elites who wield high technology to gain their wealth must also compete and if there is any sign of them cooperating too closely for too long, we need to break them up or shut them down.
When Apple and Google agree, cooperate, and adopt the same policies - we are all doomed. It must never happen and we must furthermore break them up if they try, which they are now doing.
> if you don’t understand how and why these capabilities are used by services, I’m also suspicious you understand the harms accurately
Yeah, I see this mentality a lot on HN (and kinda everywhere for that matter). "Anyone who disagrees with me is evil, and must therefore have evil motives for everything they're doing. The reasonable/innocent explanation they give for why they're doing this must actually be a front for this other shadowy, nefarious motivation that I just made up on the spot, because surely nobody ever does bad things for good reasons. Certainly not those evil people who disagree with me!"
I hate having to defend Google here, because I think this is genuinely a terrible, freedom-destroying move, but malware on Android is a real problem (especially in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand, where they're rolling this out initially) and this probably will do a lot to solve it. I'm just categorically against the whole idea of taking away the freedom of mentally sound adults "for their own good" regardless of whether it works or not, and this particular case is especially maddening because I'm one of those adults whose freedom is being destroyed.
As someone working on a product that relies on Play Integrity and PAT to give legit mobile users zero captchas while challenging non-attested clients, I promise you are quite wrong here.
The benefits may not be sufficient to offset the harms you see, but if you don’t understand how and why these capabilities are used by services, I’m also suspicious you understand the harms accurately.
Think about what happened when we got advances in agriculture.
We have gone from something like 90% of people employed growing food to something in the single digits (I'm too lazy at the moment to get exact figures, but this is close enough for my point).
Did all those advances in agriculture create jobs? I would say yes and no.
For the specific industry the advances happened in? No, definitely not. There are way fewer jobs in agriculture now.
But what did happen is that people were freed up to do different things. Those jobs were indirectly created by the fact that people did not need to spend so much time growing food. That allowed people to do other things to create value and improve our lives. Without those agriculture advances, we wouldn't have AI right now.
I suspect AI will be similar. We aren't going to have more jobs in the technology section because of AI. But that guy who hears "Code Monkey" for the first time and marvels that someone wrote a song about his life? He won't be a code monkey anymore he will be doing something else. If he's lucky something more personally fulfilling.
It's just basic economics; when something makes the economy more efficient, it doesn't destroy jobs forever, people get new, better jobs in a more efficient economy.
Perhaps AI will finally raise the bar so high lower-IQ individuals won't be able to find any meaningful employment, but this has never happened in before and I doubt it'll happen again. I don't think I've seen a respected economist go on a news broadcast and say AI will lead to mass unemployment.
The world isn't child-safe. Nobody would want children to play on a motorway, nobody would feed children xxxtra-hot curry of death, nobody would want children to drive a car or play with kitchen knifes.
Yet none of those far more problematic things comes with an age check, a fence, government controls or any special kinds of locks. We just educate children, and parents pay attention. Children that are too young to understand are put in special places like kindergarten, and even at a later age are often supervised by responsible adults.
I don't see why the internet should suddenly be all of that in reverse: Things like the online safety act require a whole world full of child-safe sites, and a child-impenetrable fence put around the few ones considered unsafe. This is totally ass-backwards.
The book "There is no antimemetics division" is about the team fighting an SCP antimeme. It's a really fun read and a bit of a mindf*. I strongly recommend it.
Users always have a way to compromise their own security, and short of taking away their freedom completely (e.g. putting them in a mental hospital) that's not possible to fix.
Sacrificing human freedom in the name of security is a long, dark, and well-trodden path that I don't think we ought to venture down any further.
I guess it depends on the authoritarian government, but a sufficiently powerful one will get the app taken down or get the bluetooth features it relies on disabled (like for airdrop in China) :/
I would say that the underlying issue is that people do not really "own" their devices and the corporations that do are vulnerable to (or complicit in) state coercion.
You cannot truly have freedom on a non-free device, you can just be small enough to not be worth taking action against yet.
The fallacy is in expecting corporations to play the role of the government.
Suppose someone posts a YouTube video that you claim is defamatory. How is Google supposed to know if it is or not? It could be entirely factual information that you're claiming is false because you don't want to be embarrassed by the truth. Google is not a reasonable forum for third parties to adjudicate legal disputes because they have no capacity to ascertain who is lying.
What the government is supposed to be doing in these cases is investigating crimes and bringing charges against the perpetrators. Only then they have to incur the costs of investigating the things they want to pass laws against, and take the blame for charges brought against people who turn out to be innocent etc.
So instead the politicians want to pass the buck and pretend that it's an outrage when corporations with neither the obligation nor the capacity to be the police predictably fail in the role that was never theirs.
> Not everything needs to be 'efficient' sometimes things should be 'just' or 'humane' rather than 'efficient'
You ignored the second part of my paragraph. It's far easier to be humane when operating in an efficient system than an inefficient one.
Even a multi-billion dollar datacenter can and will go unused if the price of water to cool it gets high enough. If keeping that datacenter running is somehow so important to larger society that it's actually more efficient to airlift in water from across the country to supply coolant than to shut down the datacenter (extremely doubtful), then that's exactly what should happen, and it's exactly what the market will make happen unless you interfere.
If unstable market prices result in temporary, unacceptably inhumane conditions for other people, then the most efficient solution is certainly going to be to work within the market-based system to help those people (e.g. subsidize the cost of water to residential homes until prices stabilize), not to override the system and prevent that (apparently extremely valuable) datacenter from being constructed in the first place.
> > NYC's congestion pricing
> That isn't a market, that is a tax.
People are freely choosing to exchange their money in return for a service. That's a market. Not a perfectly free market since NYC roads are a local monopoly, but closer to that ideal than the previous system of "free roads".
> Look, markets are great, but I don't get this quasi-religious adherence to one mechanism amongst many as the be-all-end-all of solutions.
Markets are more than just great, they've proven themselves time and time again to be nearly unbeatable in their ability to create wealth and allocate resources efficiently.
Markets are based on the collective decisions of millions of people taking billions of factors into account to create the most efficient outcome for everyone. None of us have any hope of beating that with our own naive takes on what "seems best". Anytime we interfere we're making everyone poorer in the service of whatever other goal we're trying to achieve, so we better be darned sure it's worth it.
> when someone needs something to survive, the market stops working because the value is infinite to them
No, that's precisely the situation where markets work best: when resources are scarce. A single gallon of water isn't worth much to a data center or a farmer; you can't water a field with just one gallon. But it's potentially worth a lot to someone who's thirsty. Prices will go up, demand will drop, and supply will increase to meet demand, unless you kneecap that process by imposing artificial price controls - then you'll have shortages.
> you can have people who need it but are too poor to pay what others will pay for it
You're right, markets are not charities; they're only concerned with efficiency. Caring for people who can't take care of themselves isn't efficient, but it is the right thing to do. Even in this situation though you're better off with markets than without them, because it's way easier for people, organizations, and governments with excess resources to provide for the needy when they're operating in an efficient environment than in an inefficient one.
> If someone [...] buys all the water
That's called a monopoly and I agree that's not good, because if one person owns/controls everything it's no longer a free market; you're essentially back to central planning. Individuals and data centers should be able to buy their water in a competitive market, not one dominated by a single supplier.
> It also doesn't work when the product is common use, like a road or a park
Markets are actually great at allocating things like road space. NYC's congestion pricing is doing wonders for the efficiency of their road system right now, and tolls have been a thing basically forever. But I agree in principle it's hard for markets to allocate resources that there's no practical mechanism of charging for. Thankfully, water generally doesn't fall into that category.
Arguably, even considering HDR a distinct thing is itself weird an inaccurate.
All mediums have a range, and they've never all matched. Sometimes we've tried to calibrate things to match, but anyone watching SDR content for the past many years probably didn't do so on a color-calibrated and brightness calibrated screen - that wouldn't allow you to have a brightness slider.
HDR on monitors is about communicating content brightness and monitor capabilities, but then you have the question of whether to clip the highlights or just map the range when the content is mastered for 4000 nits but your monitor manages 1000-1500 and only in a small window.
Not really. It hurts people's feelings to find out they weren't invited to something they thought they should have been. Protecting feelings and smoothing out awkward social dynamics are the the category of "very adult."
As a more general example, you wouldn't talk about a happy hour you were going to after work with people who weren't invited/aren't invited/you wouldn't invite. I believe every sitcom on the planet has at least one episode with this lesson in it.
In many of these discussions that line seems to get blurred and I start to get the impression people are using the specter of a vague, poorly understood hypothetical future problem to argue for concrete societal changes now.