_nothing

I don't use and don't want to use any feature that is listed there. I don't use Siri on my Macbook, I don't need writing tools run on every single thing I write, I hate text predictions, I don't want summaries on the content I want to read, I don't need models analyzing my photos in the background.

In fact I don't want models doing anything in the background that I didn't explicitly ask them to do.

Cool but I'm a bit confused - bubble sorted by what, exactly? Like what is the y-axis?

The photo on his Twitter account has one of the websites listed in his HN profile (Crossies) in the background, so I'm assuming that's him.

You have every reason to take pride in your work and how far you've come, but you're missing the point. "Slave labor" is of course an exaggeration (and an exaggeration that shouldn't be made lightly) but the point is you didn't have as much freedom in that job as your Western colleagues.

You had to work harder than the Swedes because the alternative was worse for you. It sounds like you're happy for your time at that company, but a lot of H1B workers find themselves in unpleasant work conditions that they don't have the same freedom to leave as their American counterparts. Their employers know they can subject them to a worse environment because they have more riding on it, whereas an American worker can simply leave and find a better job.

That's the point. It's more like indentured servitude than slavery in that regard anyway. The problem isn't that it doesn't make anyone's lives better in the end, the problem is that it's of concerning ethics on the part of the employer.

Yeah, people have been talking about the decreased Vitamin D levels in COVID patients and suggesting supplementation since almost the very beginning of the pandemic. Maybe they just don't want to draw attention away from the fact that vaccination and masking are still by far the best means of avoiding hospitalization.

I think they're saying to be mad about what data is collected. For example, be mad if they're storing your IP address and location and not be mad if they're just storing a counter of how many people visited their marketing page.

I appreciate that explanation. While awkward, I believe "efficiency zone" is a much clearer term to use, or at least it was worthwhile clarifying that that's what you meant.

While I understand what you're saying, I still don't think that ultimately matters when talking about what humans should or shouldn't be doing, what we're supposed to or not supposed to be doing, considering:

1. Human nature is not particularly efficient, and neither is evolution, at least on the surface. Peacocks' feathers are not particularly efficient features for them to develop. Yes, avoiding meat may seem harder than not avoiding meat, but the same could be said for following a religion, or organizing into a governing body, or adhering to some social norm, and yet humans have naturally done those for probably their entire existence. They do so because they at least perceive a benefit for them even if some might disagree on that benefit.

2. The human digestive system is not mono-faceted. It evolved to be multi-use and flexible. You are not using a hammer incorrectly by refraining from using the claw side because you've decided your problem can be solved perfectly fine with the hammer face. You are not using a TV incorrectly if you never visit channel 19 because you don't want to watch whatever is on channel 19.

I stand by my point. The fact that you can efficiently do something doesn't mean you're "supposed to" do that thing. It just gives you the option.

I don't think you're a creationist - this is just a very common distinction in thinking about evolution that results in all sorts of illogical fallacies.

This is my exact point: Your hands have no purpose. They evolved in a way that aided in survival. If someone is born mutated with their fingers fused together and then suddenly the entire earth floods and they find their solid hands help them swim better - were their hands evolved for the purpose of swimming? Were they designed? Is that human then "supposed to" swim?

We're finding microorganisms that can consume plastic. Does that mean they evolved for the purpose of eating plastic, a substance not typically found in nature?

In my worldview, no, they weren't. They can consume plastic, but that has no bearing on their purpose, and they aren't leaving part of their purpose unfulfilled if they don't eat plastic and instead eat other substances they evolved to be able to eat.

I think we're on the same page in believing that there's not an inherent morality to these behaviors. I'm not accusing of you to try to justify some morally evil act.

The comment you originally replied to said this:

> Weird how this is said without a shred of sympathy or concern for an intelligent, helpless creature

To which you replied:

> It's not weird at all. Biologically speaking, we are designed to eat meat. > The weird thing is how we developed sympathy and concern for such things.

What I was responding to was the claim that because we evolved the capacity to eat meat, we should naturally be dispassionate to the killing of animals. What I'm saying is that since we evolved both the capacity for carnivory and sympathy, that our capacity for eating animals does not make our sympathy for animals at all unnatural.

It's not unnatural for us to want to kill animals for our survival. But it's also not unnatural for us to care about and feel sympathy towards animals. I feel that you've been using our capacity for meat-eating to deem vegetarianism, sympathy towards animals, etc. as against our nature.

With that, the point of my differentiating between the act of hunting and eating animals versus experimenting with them and their dead bodies is comparable to the difference in severity of humans fighting each other versus torturing each other. Humans clearly have the capacity for both, and yet one typically elicits a higher negative reaction in people than the other. Our ability to empathize with all sorts of pain falls along such an axis.

Edit:

To your last point, if people naturally develop an empathy towards animals so strong that it overrides their own sense of self-preservation, why is that unnatural? Is a human giving their life to save other humans unnatural? That's exactly why I keep repeating that there is no "design" - or if you'd prefer, "intent". There is no rule in nature that says species are supposed to prioritize the survival of their own, and so deviating from that nonexistent rule is not unnatural. If experimenting on animals is absolutely necessary to humanity's survival and humanity one day refuses, it will simply die out like millions of species before it. Going extinct isn't unnatural either.

I already said this in a different comment, but the difference is that we were not designed while a Swiss army knife was. Design implies intent— it implies that something was developed for a purpose, that it's supposed to be used in a certain way.

Whether or not I use the corkscrew on my Swiss army knife doesn't change the fact that someone built the corkscrew for the purpose of opening corked bottles.

The enzymes/features humans possess that enable us to consume meat were selected for because at some point in the history of our species they enabled our ancestors to survive while others without the related genes did not.

This can change at any point, for any species. If we are no longer in an environment where eating meat confers a significant survival advantage then the fact that we evolved to be able to eat meat has absolutely no bearing on whether or not we should.

Chasing an animal down, killing it, and eating it is in my opinion a significantly different activity than subjecting it to thirty likely-invasive procedures over the course of its life and then continuing to perform experiments on its dead body. Not saying it's more or less morally questionable, but significantly different.

Evolutionary biology is overused as justification for human behavior. We were not "designed" to eat meat because we were not designed. We evolved the capacity to eat meat just as we evolved a capacity for sympathy/empathy. Other animals have also been shown to "befriend"/care for/grieve over animals of different species, so our own capacity to sympathize for animals should be no surprise.

What do you mean "which personality I want to get"? You don't choose between five personalities, you find where you are on the scale of different personality traits that are present to some extent in everyone.

And yes, you can affect the outcome if you want. You can affect the results of any test if you want. I can make my IQ test look like I'm very stupid. I can cram for some certification exam and forget all the material the next day. The idea is that if people actually want an accurate reading then they will answer truthfully.

I feel like you're conflating two arguments that are unrelated. The fact that the results of psychometric tests can be misused and manipulated by bad actors is a separate issue to whether or not they are scientifically valid when administered properly and taken in good faith. You've admitting that various tests can provide useful --though not 100% accurate-- information. That's the whole point: To provide useful information, which can be further explored.

Psychologists creating and using a test to evaluate five personality traits does is not them saying that there are only five personality traits or that everyone with a given result is the same. The tests are basic, they are primitive in our understanding of how the mind and personalities work, and they have just been shown to be statistically valid enough to be useful in informing other things.

On that note, I completely agree that psych tests shouldn't be used to determine anything of importance outside of clinical settings. As I said, none of this is anything but a primitive understanding and shouldn't be used to determine career tracks or anything about our place in society. I hear about companies using the MBTI (which I personally loathe) to place people and I cringe so bad.

> If it were such a lousy deal for content creators, wouldn't they choose other work instead?

I don't disagree with you overall, but by the sheer number of people I know who hate their jobs yet feel like they can't leave, I can tell you it often doesn't work this way. Not saying you're doing this, but people have used "well if it's such a bad job then they should just find a different one" to justify everything from bad warehouse work conditions to underpaid fast food positions to sweat shops elsewhere. I think it's been well demonstrated that it is not always so simple for people to leave lousy jobs.

> We understand that some of you have used dislikes to help decide whether or not to watch a video – still, we believe this is the right thing to do for our platform

So basically, "We understand that this feature is useful in helping you determine where to spend your time and attention, but we're going to do it anyway because it benefits us."

> and to help create an inclusive and respectful environment where creators have the opportunity to succeed and feel safe to express themselves.

"Because we need our creators to get views and keep making content regardless of whether or not our users think it's worth watching."

I once had a coworker message me out of the blue asking if I'd be available to chat later that day. I said sure, thinking he'd follow up with the topic of the chat, but he just sent me a non-descriptive calendar invite. I didn't want to sound paranoid so I didn't ask (I should have), but in my head I was racking my brain for any possible reason he could want to talk to me one-on-one. I was pretty new to the company at the time so I was worried I'd done something wrong, but I couldn't think of anything so serious that he would need to schedule a chat about it and also he wasn't really my superior so that would have been really strange. I decided to just try not to worry about it.

In the end, it turned out he was leaving the company and wanted to tell his fellow engineers one by one. It was sweet and the secretiveness made sense in that context, but it did leave me a bit spooked.

Conversely, during a one-on-one my supervisor ended our small talk with, "So I have something a bit more serious that I want to talk about..." immediately followed by, "--it's nothing bad!" So luckily he was a bit better about not being spooky. Turned out they were promoting me.

Outrage is feedback. The people in that subreddit, the people in this HN thread, are all people who have had to apply for jobs and go through interviews, and thus are all potential customers. If your potential customers are outraged by the very idea of your business, that's feedback.

If you feel it's acceptable that having money/networks of people with money would give people an advantage in the world, the shock is understandable. However, others are vehemently opposed to the world working like this and anything that contributes to such a world, like this business idea.

Also:

1) unless you think it will be very common that people with money will take up sponsoring minorities for jobs, the fact that you personally would do it doesn't counteract the disadvantage of minorities in general through this system, and

2) if you want to pay to help people from underrepresented groups get jobs, there are already plenty of ways to do so, from sponsoring education to hiring interview coaches, and more.

This question isn't necessarily directed to you but your comment made me wonder: How do other cam sites handle payments and what makes them different than OF?

I'm confused at your invocation of that quote. Are you saying the solution to this woman having to work a job she doesn't like is to force low income workers to work jobs they don't like? And the flood of low income workers who have no choice but to work these jobs will alleviate wealth inequality?

What kind of publications are you referring to? Yeah, many pop-sci articles often overstate the implications of a given discovery, but actual research papers (such as the one linked) typically have a discussion section in which they describe the limitations of the discovery and what kind of future research could help expound on the pitfalls of the current research.

The paper in this post itself has its own Limitations section.

This is the part of psychology I don't like.

What really gets hijacked here is a basic understanding of neuroscience and neuroanatomy, used to support otherwise unsubstantiated theories of what is presented as a neurological phenomenon.

Look at the sources of this article: The UMass Family Business Center, Sport and Recreation New Zealand, the CEO of True North Leadership. None of them are scientific, none of them present any evidence themselves, all of them are regurgitations of the original source: Daniel Goleman and his book.

If Goleman presents any actual scientific evidence of this phenomenon in his book, none of it is listed in that article. It's just more pop psychology, more "Your right brain is responsible for creativity so you should focus on doing things with your left hand", "the limbic system is the primitive reptile brain", and other BS like that.

We literally have no idea what most brain structures actually do, just that they're involved in various processes, so to make the definitive claim that "this is how these processes work" is disingenuous at best.

/rant

I really hope Anker stays off this list. They always seemed to make quality products, but I can imagine they'd feel the pressure to give into shady tactics themselves if all their competitors were engaging in it.

I've ordered some things from Mpow and Aukey before and they seemed like pretty good quality as well. Not that I condone these practices at all, but I could sympathize with the argument that in a marketplace that relies on reviews and where your competitors are buying thousands of reviews, it could be almost impossible to survive without doing the same, even if your product is good.

Of course, that kind of marketplace only hurts the consumer, so I appreciate Amazon cracking down on it.

This may be your experience, however I have extreme doubt that these are anything but learned behaviors. There is nothing intrinsically masculine or feminine about sticks, dump trucks, strollers, or dolls. They are just objects, and for the majority of human existence the latter three didn't even exist in their current form.

All knowledge of these objects, what they're used for, and who uses them were learned from societal influences. A kid doesn't have to care about social norms to tell that most people they see playing with sticks or driving dump trucks are men, and most people they see pushing strollers and playing with dolls are women. It's like that from out in the park to within picture books.

I'm not sure which Latin dances you're thinking of but I can think of a bunch of instances in salsa where objects in my right pocket would get in the way. Definitely in bachata, and kizomba if one considers that a Latin dance.

Also depends on what "Swing" you're referring to, but even in Lindy Hop I would say I my right hip is close to my partner frequently enough that this would be an issue, in partnered Charleston and various Shags there is regular side-by-side connection (connected on the right side for the lead), and Balboa is danced in an offset close embrace position where your hips, while not necessarily in direct contact, will often brush against each other simply due to proximity.

It's clear (at least to me) that due to the history of systemic racism against them as well as the circumstances under which they came to live on this continent, many Black Americans are at a tangible disadvantage compared to most other groups in the US, especially White people. So I certainly believe in what you would call a Black Tax.

However, it does seem to me like the specific things you speak about in this essay could be considered to be more of a Poor Tax, which disproportionately affects Black Americans more than White People, due to the factors above. But taking just this specific essay, one could replace every instance of the word "Black" with "immigrant" or "Latino" or "Native American", etc, and it would be just as true.

Again, not to take away from the main point that Black people have it harder than many other races in the Americas (and some other places). But as an immigrant to the US, from a family that sends streams of money and goods to support our family members back home, it's nearly impossible not to think "hold on, this isn't an exclusively Black experience" when reading this essay.

Again, honest question: Is $20/hr the minimum living wage in a small rural town?

It seemed like an area lots of suburbanites liked to go to shop. Yorktown mall was right down the road and there were lots of other retail stores and restaurants all down Butterfield Road. That was definitely where my family would go when we wanted to go shopping or have a "fancy" meal (lots of fond memories of the Red Lobster on the corner).

It's cool to hear about everyone's good experiences with Fry's in the 90s; maybe they would have managed to stay in business longer if they'd ever updated since that period. I worked at a Fry's (the lone location near Chicago) for a few months in 2014 and it felt like they'd never upgraded anything since the 90s. Not the systems, not the decor-- nothing. If they were trying to make it seem retro, it failed. It just felt _stagnant_. Sad and tacky. I would understand trying to maintain the 90s tech shop feel for their nostalgic techie clientele, except that most of the customers were average Joes buying TVs, normal laptops, or toys for their kids.

All in all it created kind of a miserable environment for employees. After I'd left, I went to a different Fry's in San Jose to buy a laptop and the worker helping me just openly admitted, unprompted, that they hated working there.

Of course, maybe not upgrading anything is actually part of the reason they even made it this far. Everything technically worked, after all, so perhaps the savings were worth it, at the expense of the experience for employees (and likely, then, customers). Do deal-seekers really care what their shopping experience is like as long as they're getting good deals? Perhaps not.

This is an honest question - Can small businesses in rural areas afford a $20/hour minimum wage? I can't imagine a grocery store in a small town being able to maintain much of a staff (or any) at that rate, for example.

> In recent years, scientists have figured out how to grow blobs of hundreds of thousands of live human neurons that look — and act — something like a brain.

This concept makes me substantially more uneasy now after reading the "Lena" short story that was on the front page earlier [0], involving a digital copy of a person's brain that was subsequently duplicated and simulated millions of times over a period of decades (or longer). The idea seemed like a cross between the original Lena image and HeLa cells[1], with the added factor of consciousness.

Sure these "brain organoids" probably can't think in the same way or scale that humans can, but still, we're growing pieces of human brains...

0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26224835 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa