MichaelGroves

You're right, I've read numerous articles and editorials in the NYTimes about this issue.

> Would you be okay with that?

What does it even mean to be "okay with that" in this context? I certainly think it should be legal for newspapers to publish opeds arguing for harsher sentencing, just as it should be legal for newspapers to publish opeds calling for more lenient sentencing. I am okay with both. If I said it was only okay when I happened to agree with it, that would make me an authoritarian.

All the people hand-wringing about newspapers advocating against causes they believe in should spend less time wishing their opponents didn't exist, or weren't permitted to speak, and spend more time writing advocacy articles of their own. If you think anecdotes are more effective than statistics, then go dig up some anecdotes of your own. You're never going to stop your opponents from using anecdotes.

Second Life for kids.

That's how it works in minecraft right? Kids can design and build a minigame within the context of minecraft, but minecraft doesn't provide provide some minecraft diamonds to USD conversion service that allows players to bring real money into the game, or to cash out game money for real money. (Some third party servers might provide this, in violation of the Terms of Use.)

This seems like a fine state of affairs to me.

> So, the unwanted results here are still due to the input data. But neither the input data, nor the algorithms contain any racial bias towards the black people. The results might be merely due to the difference between dark faces and pale faces under the natural law of physics. These are unwanted results due to our social norms, but they are NOT racially biased or racist, because there is no such bias introduced or inherent during any part of the process.

In this, and the reasoning above it, I think you are correct. Assuming we are right about this, what is the next step? You say the next step is to improve data collection, e.g. by creating better cameras. That seems a fine proposal to me, I support that, but I think there is more that might also be done. For instance, the use of ML models could be restricted or regulated in at least some contexts, until the problems with data collection are rectified. For instance, we could ban the police from using facial recognition models until the problems with data collection are solved. The bias is a side-effect of photography, not something intrinsic to the facial recognition algorithm, but restricting the use of that algorithm might nonetheless be a valid response to this circumstance.

> You cannot ask a researcher to invent a new more performant computer-vision model, invent a way to correct for bias, and design a fair dataset all in one. That's three entirely different careers.

Might it not sometimes be reasonable to ask researchers in one domain to slow their roll, if researchers in a related domain are making slower progress? If I invent 10 new forms of nerve gas every year, while you invent 5 new antidotes to nerve gas every year, where does the problem lay? Solely with you, for not working fast enough? I don't think that's reasonable. Does the problem lay with me, for not inventing nerve gas antidotes? I don't think that's reasonable either, antidotes are not my specialty and I can't be expected to create them. But if I'm the one inventing new systems that become a problem for society because your domain of counter-research isn't keeping up, then I have some substantial share in that blame nonetheless.

Any word with powerful meaning in one context will inevitably be repurposed in other contexts by people who want to borrow some of that power for their own uses.

Here is an example: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=democratize

What the platform incentivizes is not all there is to consider. Actual outcome must also be considered. Nike can go through all the motions of incentivizing the use of ethical labor in their factories, but if it turns out that despite their efforts, a significant portion of their sneakers are made by child slave labor, then I'm not going to go around claiming Nike is an ethical business. Maybe I'll buy a pair of Nike shoes anyway, because I don't see a better option, but I still won't claim that Nike is ethical. I'll leave extolling the virtue of Nike to the Nike PR department. Anyway, intentions do count for something I think, but outcome is more important.

Note that I am not claiming Onlyfans is unethical. I don't know if Onlyfans is ethical or not. I don't know what the rate of abuse content on Onlyfans is. That's information I simply don't have. Furthermore, I'm not even sure what rate of abuse content society should tolerate from a company. Probably if these are only isolated incidents that are swiftly recognized and rectified, it shouldn't damn the whole platform. Also, I think it probably matters whether that rate is trending up or down, but I don't have any information about either possible trend. I lack the information I need to support the claim that Onlyfans is ethical, and I think the rest of you do as well.

> There is no good gps app anyway.

Forget global positioning specifically, shouldn't a good OpenStreetMap atlas application without automatic positioning be feasible, if not presently available? Today it might feel like caveman technology, but it's not that long ago that having a high quality up-to-date world atlas that fits in your pocket would have been considered a considerable marvel. That such an atlas might also tell you exactly where you are at all times is icing on the cake.

> How do you know that cheap editing job on fiverr is not made by an enslaved worker?

That's my point, you don't and can't. You should be cognizant of the possibility of abuse, not write off the possibility. Don't pretend to know when you couldn't possibly know. People who claim that abuse doesn't exist on Onlyfans are almost certainly wrong. How much abuse content exists on OF is unknown; unknown to everybody in this conversation, and unknown even to OF. Whether OF is ethical depends on how much abusive content is on OF, which none of us know, and how much abuse somebody thinks should be tolerated, which is subjective.

Anybody who claims that Onlyfans is ethical is making a claim about the rate of abuse which they can't back up.

They could do that. Or they could choose not to be involved in that sort of business.

> I totally agree that OnlyFans is a legitimate and ethical site

"IRL", abusive relationships can be hidden in plain site from people who think they know the couple well. How do you stand any chance of knowing there isn't an abusive pimp behind the camera of an onlyfans account? Ultimately you only have intuition and guesswork to go off of, but both are fallible. Even if the platform itself is trusted and does a good job of verifying identities, that doesn't preclude abuse.

That's the point of all of this isn't it? Wikipedia's standard/definition of notability, or their method for determining it, is broken.

> She is notable now for having won a Nobel Prize

That's not right. The Nobel Prize didn't bequeath notability to her, it recognized the notability she already earned for herself.

Citing reputable sources is necessary but not sufficient. In practice, wikipedia seems to care about the appearance of citation more than citation itself (a number of studies have shown that using [bracketed footnote numbers] boosts the perceived credibility of preceding claims. [1][2]) On wikipedia, citing claims is a cargo cult.

As for fixing errors on wikipedia myself? I gave up on that years ago when I tried to fix a few mispellings and had my changes reverted by bots within a minute.

[1] https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/nrcs142p2_0...

[2] https://www.gov.mb.ca/agriculture/environment/nutrient-manag...

> You're being downvoted because everyone knows Wikipedia is built on citations.

Got a citation for that supposed common knowledge? I couldn't resist myself, but seriously, wikipedia purports to be built on citations but how often have you tried checking citations to see if they contain the information a wikipedia article claims? Many times I have found that information in a wikipedia article is nowhere to be found in the citations given.

People often claim as I just have, criticizing wikipedia without providing specific examples, which wikipedia apologists seize on to dunk on the criticism. I don't think this is fair, keeping logs of wikipedia errors is a tedious hobby that most people aren't going to bother with for a number of reasons (because correcting wikipedia means wading into the bureaucracy which produced/permitted the errors in the first place, because 'everybody knows' that wikipedia is riddled with bullshit and pointing it out is thankless, etc) Nevertheless, I do have a specific example off the top of my head, which I found a few days ago:

> Brilliant Pebbles was a non-nuclear system of satellite-based interceptors designed to use high-velocity, watermelon-sized, teardrop-shaped projectiles made of tungsten as kinetic warheads.[64][65]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative#B...

This sentence has two citations, and has the smell of truthiness. Tungsten kinetic impactors in space? I've heard that before somewhere, it sure sounds true! Besides, pebbles are like rocks, and a big ball of tungsten is like a rock. It all seems to jive and the claim has survived on this page for almost a decade.

The problem? It's bullshit and neither of those citations back it up. Follow either citation and look for any claim of the PB interceptors being made out of tungsten; neither citation claims it. And if you read what they actually say about the interceptors, you'll see that tungsten interceptors don't even make sense in the first place. The Brilliant Pebbles system was meant to put thousands of tiny "hit to kill" (kinetic) interceptors into orbit, which would detect and intercept ballistic missile launches during the boost phase. To do that, they would need to be nimble, and to be nimble they would need to not be a watermelon sized chunk of tungsten. You can't move that much tungsten around quick on very short notice without large rocket motors, but those citations describe tiny interceptors. Furthermore, launching thousands of chunks of tungsten like that into orbit would scarcely be practical, even by SDI standards of practicality. And why would tungsten even be needed? They're meant to intercept ballistic missiles during the boost phase; just about anything more substantial than a sea gull should get the job done.

If you want to get this fixed, be warned that this bullshit has been copied from wikipedia into 'reputable' publications like Popular Mechanics. So have fun explaining XKCD #978 to a wikipedian editor. I'll leave it for you to fix, if you care.

Right, the Nobel Prize didn't make her notable, it recognized her existing notability. What made her notable was the work she did before she got the prize. Wikipedian editors incorrectly failed to recognize her notability, because their byzantine bureaucracy is riddled with blind-spots.

The UN Security Council isn't meant to be a politically nimble engine for progressive economic change; it's meant to prevent a shooting war between those major powers. Judging the UNSC by the standard of that design intent and purpose, the UNSC has been quite effective, a few regional proxy wars could have been much worse for everybody on this planet. We can call it a failure if/when America and China start WW3 and cover everybody else in fallout, but that hasn't happened yet. So far, the United Nations Security Council is working well.

> Low orbits do decay naturally in a few decades, yes, but MEO and GEO orbits can take thousands to millions of years to decay.

Tens of years? Try tens of months. The ISS has a minimum mean altitute of 370 km, a max of 460 km, and within those parameters loses about 2 km per month. But the lower it gets, the faster it falls. When it's on the lower end of it's range, it falls about 3 km per month and that would accelerate rapidly if allowed to go lower. As it is, the ISS is boosted several times a year; five times this year so far: https://www.heavens-above.com/IssHeight.aspx They can go as long as a few months without boosts, but not much longer than that. Not tens of years.

The ISS is big and draggy, but the situation isn't much different for smaller satellites in similar orbits. Two test satellites for Starlink, Tintin A and B, were launched to about 500km in 2018. Both have subsequently burned up in the atmosphere after less than three years: https://www.n2yo.com/satellite/?s=43216

> It sounds like you're [...] ignoring the advice of experts

Heh, forgive me for this but it seems like you have some half-baked ideas about Kessler syndrome you gleaned from popsci media. The reality is not so simple, nor as extreme, as you've made it out to be. Your estimates for LEO are about an order of magnitude off.

Facebook hires underpaid and poorly treated contractors to moderate exactly this same kind of content. I see no reason to believe Apple will be any different, particularly a few months from now when the general public's attention has shifted to other matters (assuming they're even paying attention right now. I don't think the interests of HN are necessarily representative of the general public..)

Canonical and ClamAV aren't trying to curry favor with the US government to stave off antitrust action.

I don't think chlorine in water is considered a medication. Chlorine in water is added with the intention of disinfecting the water, for human health reasons, but that disinfection happens before the water is consumed. The chlorine is treating the water, not the humans who drink the water.

I'm not talking about combined sewers. Systems in which the sanitary sewer and the storm sewer are completely separate can become combined sewers when the sanitary sewer is inundated with more infiltration/inflow than it can handle. When this happens, the sanitary sewer overflows into the street or people's homes. That sewage overflowing into the street will then make its way into the storm sewer.

There is no easy solution to this. Building the sanitary sewers bigger is the obvious solution, except that costs more money and a lot of places don't have much money to spare (corruption, poverty, etc.) Furthermore, just how over-designed does a sanitary sewer have to be? Climate change makes this difficult to predict decades in advance.

BTW [intentionally] combined sewers are problematic even when they're not overflowing. Diluting sewage with a bunch of water increases the cost and decreases the efficacy of treatment.

> Humans don't poop in a box and have someone else handle it?

Well.. not usually. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedpan

> Second is combined sanitary AND rain runoff sewers - which bypass treatment when there is high rain.

This is a very difficult problem. If the sanitary sewers aren't in great condition, rising ground water levels can leak into the sanitary sewers. Sewers that were initially well made might be damaged over time by people digging, the ground shifting, or tree roots pushing things around. One way or the other, when high ground waters get into a sanitary sewer, you now have a situation where those sewers are overflowing. And what can be done with that overflow? Let it pool up in the streets? Sending it down the storm drains is about the best you can do at that point.

> Is there any way to prevent it?

Do what I do: Run it on a burner computer connected to your guest network.

This should be a boon for the GOA, which has a much better track record of actually supporting what they purport to support.

> Would you consider the sliced and bagged bread to be ultra-processed, but not a whole loaf of basically the same thing?

"Ultra" seems subjective, but sliced bread is objectively more processed.

The mistake is assuming that "processed" is necessary a good measure of nutritional merit. A freeze dried turnip is more processed than a piece of raw honeycomb, but I'm pretty sure you'd give yourself diabetes eating honeycomb all day long while binging on turnips should be fine.

Besides corporate VPNs, typical consumer VPNs are also set up to allow LAN access. Your average joe-smoe would be annoyed if their network printer stopped working every time they turned on their VPN to watch netflix movies or whatever.

"Lots of people do it" should never be considered a legitimate excuse. Trying to use that excuse should get you kicked out of the meeting room.