Hacker News Reader

Erlangolemon Is Facebook Really Scarier Than Google?

I believe FB makes something like $6.50 per user. Obviously Google makes money from users too, and given overlap it seems likely that one user is worth quite a bit annually. Average that out over lifetime value, and we’re talking thousands of dollars.

Imagine if the likes of Equifax treated silos of data as a liability instead of an asset to be milked. Properly valued, a breach of hundreds of millions of people’s data would end a business, even as large as Equifax.

Erlangolemon Facebook tracks your private calls

I agree. Now what about engineers at Google, especially with their drone program partnership with the DOD? How about engineers at Uber making cars that are unfit for the road?Engineers in general need to either grow a spine and a conscience fast, or they need enforced ethical standards. It’s. It just Facebook, although Facebook is particularly nasty, and there is no sign of people giving upon their cushy jobs to do the right thing.

Mostly they seem happy to go public while babbling about how they’re “changing the world” as in that pitiful letter from DropBox.

Erlangolemon The New Law That Killed Craigslist’s Personals Could End the Web as We’ve Known

In the US and most Western countries, it takes a lot of work to do what you’re describing, and there would be pushback. Going after a few people is no problem, but a whole population? No. China can do it because it’s an autocracy, with a long history of autocratic rule, strong central government and weak institutions. In the US politicians have to get re-elected.

Erlangolemon How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race’

Safartic or Ashkenazi? Both are Jews, only one is st risk of passing on Tay-Sachs. Which is the “race” hm?

Erlangolemon The New Law That Killed Craigslist’s Personals Could End the Web as We’ve Known

Ironically it’s just these kinds of laws which may finally create a broader popular drive to re-decentralize. Those people looking for sex and drugs and whatever else aren’t going to just say, “well shit, the government said no, let’s head to church.” They’re going to look for alternatives, and alternatives will be there for them. It won’t be glossy Java-heavy “Web 2.0” of course, it will be Tor, Mastadon, and encrypted communications.

That’s the real strength of the internet, you cut of F a head and two more grow back. If more stringent laws are passed, that just creates more drive for alternatives. It’s going to be ugly, but I remember when the internet was ugly, but worked. It won’t make people filthy rich overnight, but that’s not the net either. People still want to hook up, buy guns and weed, and just talk without Big Brother breathing down their neck. It will start small, and grow fast; after all we have a few decades worth of roadmap.

People who’ve moaned about people needing to look past a handful of sites are possibly going to get their wish. The total inability for governments to field sustainable technical solutions to shutting down commas has not changed.

So fight.

Erlangolemon Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash

If you think it’s an appeal to emotion, make a real argument in that direction, don’t bluntly state the contents of your head and move on. As it stands, you just appear morally bankrupt. I’m strongly inclined to believe that’s the case, and your inability to make a cogent argument makes me wonder about what else you’re lacking.

By the way, you may be misunderstanding “appeal to emotion” as “having emotions” and that’s worrying. I can only hope your attitude is literally pathological, and not just your personality. Either way, please never work near people, or I’m a critical system effecting people.

Erlangolemon Seattle's New Normal: Homelessness Is Now Middle Class

In a lot of ways I envy these people; there's a lot of hardship they face with the lack of permanent address, and I can't imagine that RV living is incredibly pleasant nor cheap compared to more conventional house, but they're also untethered in ways that make living "normally" seem like the crazy proposition.

When it’s a choice you get to make, not when it’s your only choice. Don’t you have a shred of empathy? Envy them... Jesus Christ this site!

Freedom from dignity or the respect of your peers, of stability, of the ability to start or raise a family, and freedom from much of the dating pool. As a bonus you get to wonder when what little you have might vanish and you’re “free” from that too, and “free” to live on the streets.

Erlangolemon Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash

I thought the point of SDV’s was that they would be radically better than human drivers? You can’t have it both ways.

Erlangolemon Ask HN: Does HN respect the GDPR?

HN is selling HN, their associated startups, job postings, and so on.

Edit: who are they selling to? Would-be founders... you understand how the VC model works, right?

Erlangolemon Facebook, Google spending big bucks to fight California data privacy measure

If helping the US government refine their drone strike capabilities didn’t make them realize, I think it’s fair to say they’re totally self-interested. If you want to get their attention, go after their personal bottom line.

Erlangolemon My daughter's disabled. Please don't look away from her

I get this, and I’m sure if my kid was in this situation I’d feel the same way. For all of the kids who aren’t mine though, I can see the other poster’s point. That’s just as much a part of being human as being attached to your own offspring.

In other words, I’m not going to stare, or look away from a disabled kid. I’m also not going to invest emotionally, or go out of my way to change how I think and act day in and out for them. If someone asks me for help, I’ll help, but they’re not likely to register for me otherwise. I won’t look away, but I also won’t look; disability doesn’t make me more or less invested in strangers.

Erlangolemon Silicon Valley's Regulatory Exceptionalism Comes to an End

You say parody, I say honest representation voted to the top of the page, on article that was knocked off the front page by flagging or mods. Part of the problem is that quite a few people here are representative of the broader industry which is full of young people who think the last decade and half are just how the world works. These are the people who look at all progress as though it must conform to Moore’s Law, and think the unregulated free-for-all of their industry so far is just how it is.

Reality is slow to catch up to new things, but it is utterly inevitable.

Erlangolemon Silicon Valley's Regulatory Exceptionalism Comes to an End

They call them ethical standards, and if you’re being reduced to a purely semantic argument, why not just pack it in?

Erlangolemon Silicon Valley's Regulatory Exceptionalism Comes to an End

Silicon Valley, and software engineering in general needs regulation, but it also needs to regulate itself. The whole Libertarian wet dream is fine when you’re in college, less so when you’re building self-driving cars or surveillance networks. The lack of enforced ethical standards has always been problematic, but now it’s getting dangerous.

Once you’re involved in everything from healthcare, and automobiles, to drone strikes, you’re sll grown up and the training wheels need to die. The alternative is that this pressure continues to build and the public demands extreme regulation without understanding what they’re regulsting.

Tl;dr grow up, or they’ll come for the good (encryption) along with the bad (carelessness with human lives a la Uber).

Erlangolemon “Joy of Cooking” versus the Food Scientist

In the same way that correcting a headline seems to hurt media.

Erlangolemon Facebook Is Not the Internet's Only Privacy Villain

Unless you use one of the free options to block them, like uMatrix. It’s easy, it requires little or no effort. My bigger concern with FB is what they learn about me from people other than myself; I can’t control thst at all.

Erlangolemon [dead]

I think it’s safe to say the trust is dead. Moreover, the media has taken a huge hit over the years because of Facebook, and if you think they haven’t been sharpening their knives for this day, you haven’t been paying attention. He played a dangerous game and won for a while, but his blood is in the water and the media is a pack of sharks.

The public is going to be reminded of Facebook’s every immoral decision, and this fits into the growing narrative of tech=dangerous” which has been developing.

Erlangolemon Zuckerberg summoned to House Of Commons inquiry

Fine, I'm being pointless and stupid. But if you don't care who you're giving your data too then don't expect me to care next time it ends up with someone you didn't want.

I’ve never had a Facebook account, yet friends and family do, and through them they can get info on me. You don’t have to care though, and I’ll just get with not caring about you. Meanwhile the public at large is starting to care, and your attitude won’t impress them any more than it does me.

Erlangolemon Facebook lost more than Tesla's market cap

I think the scandals will keep coming, the media will keep banging the drum, and I think people will demand regulation. A few techie libertarians won’t even be heard amidst that noise.

People already have had serious reservations about how fast things have been changing, and if you think that death by robot car and privacy violation by social media isn’t going to create a backlash, you’re not reading your history. It won’t help the tech sector that “old media” has everything to gain by keeping this dripfeed going.

This is a first wave, and while it will recede, there are more and bigger waves to come.

Erlangolemon Startup founders throughout the Midwest are doing something new: staying

Silicon Valley needs tech, not the other way around. Tech needs investment though, and often flocks to where the money is. Right a lot of people are throwing a lot of money around Silicon Valley, so a lot of tech (or bullshit masquerading as tech) lives there.

Erlangolemon Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

It’s not done because software development is an unregulated shitshow full of wildly unethical companies scrambling for the bottom. It’s not unlike early aerospace, or early medicine, or any frontier which develops rapidly before legal frameworks inevitably close in.

Erlangolemon Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

Bad example for two reasons. First:

Although the NTSB investigated the accident, it was unable to conclusively identify the cause of the crash. The rudder PCU from Flight 585 was severely damaged, which prevented operational testing of the PCU.[3]:47 A review of the flight crew's history determined that Flight 585's captain strictly adhered to operating procedures and had a conservative approach to flying.[3]:47 A first officer who had previously flown with Flight 585's captain reported that the captain had indicated to him while landing in turbulent weather that the captain had no problem with declaring a go-around if the landing appeared unsafe.[3]:48 The first officer was considered to be "very competent" by the captain on previous trips they had flown together.[3]:48 The weather data available to the NTSB indicated that Flight 585 might have encountered a horizontal axis wind vortex that could have caused the aircraft to roll over, but this could not be shown conclusively to have happened or to have caused the rollover.[3]:48–49

On December 8, 1992, the NTSB published a report which identified what the NTSB believed at the time to be the two most likely causes of the accident. The first possibility was that the airplane's directional control system had malfunctioned and caused the rudder to move in a manner which caused the accident. The second possibility was a weather disturbance that caused a sudden rudder movement or loss of control. The Board determined that it lacked sufficient evidence to conclude either theory as the probable cause of the accident.[2]:ix[3]:49 This was only the fourth time in the NTSB's history that it had closed an investigation and published a final aircraft accident report where the probable cause was undetermined.[4]

Second:

In 2004, following an independent investigation of the recovered PCU/dual-servo unit, a Los Angeles jury, which was not allowed to hear or consider the NTSB's conclusions about the accident, ruled that the 737's rudder was the cause of the crash, and ordered Parker Hannifin, a rudder component manufacturer, to pay US$44 million to the plaintiff families.[16] Parker Hannifin subsequently appealed the verdict, which resulted in an out-of-court settlement for an undisclosed amount.

Erlangolemon Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

That sounds like the market correcting itself, while you want to protect the likes of Uber from market forces, with new laws. Putting that aside though, good luck trying to get re-elected after passing a law like that. Few people are technocratic and emotionally detached enough to agree with you, from the looks of it, not even on this site.

Erlangolemon Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

What software developer would ever sign on to a project where they could be held criminally liable for a single bug? Do you want software development to turn into healthcare, where every developer needs millions of dollars of malpractice insurance? Because shit like this will turn it into a healthcare like system real quick.

How else to interpreted that? When a single bug can cause loss of life, and given that this in a thread about Uber, it’s hard to draw other conclusions. By all means though, offer another perspective on how regulating industries with significant number of lives on the line can’t manage regulation. While you’re doing that, I’d point to the aerospace sector which seems capable of both innovation and regulation.

Erlangolemon Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

The answer to your first “question” of course is that it depends on the machine, how it’s built, programmed, and the context of operation. Machines can have much faster reflexes, or they can freeze.

Erlangolemon Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

As I said, context matters. In the context of a death, this kind of thing is doom. When someone is killed, there is also a lot of cooperation across jurisdictions.

Erlangolemon Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

If the only options you’re presenting are “move fast and break things” where those things are human lives, or introducing burdensome bureaucracy, I’ll take the bureaucracy. Time and again society chose that latter option, and it will again. Unaccountablility is worse than regulation, and history has shown that repeatedly.

Erlangolemon Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

That kind of thing might fly in some arenas, but judges have literally no sense of humor when evidence is “lost” in a criminal case, or civil wrongful death suit. That’s more or less a quick way to lose in the worst possible way.

Erlangolemon Anti-Immigrant Ads Aimed at Tech Workers Are Running on Public Transit

I’m pretty far to the Left on the issue of immigration, but I totally agree with you. As far as I’ve seen, the H1-B system is a means for some US employers to keep wages and benefits artificially depressed, through abuse of the system.

Erlangolemon Magic Leap SDK

Yeah, I lied. It worked. Bob John 02/22/1992 has access now. They get to spam the email I specifically have for useless logins.

Win-win?