bleepblorp

I wonder if there's a 'shit rolls downhill' dynamic to the popularity of mockery content on Reddit.

Reddit's demographics skew very young, which means it's mostly used by people who have very little socioeconomic standing. People at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder are subject to significant arbitrary humiliation at the hands of others (all entry-level jobs suck; so does being a student) and have no tools with which to fight back. People who are in this situation are likely to find catharsis in finding ways to see themselves--no matter how bad their personal situation is--as at least one step above someone else (hence the popularity of subs like /r/insanepeoplefacebook) and seeing abusive people being given their just rewards in ways the average Reddit reader cannot get away with (hence, the popularity of subs like /r/instantkarma).

I also wonder if there's a correlation between preferences for mockery content and the rigidity of social hierarchies in different countries. Japan, for instance, has a very rigid social hierarchy (meaning most people are subject to arbitrary abuse) and they had an entire genre of mainstream humiliation TV[0]. I'd be surprised if this kind of content is as popular in countries with flatter social hierarchies where sociopathic behavior directed at subordinates is less acceptable.

[0] https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/japanese-game-shows_n_45...

(As an aside, I haven't looked at Reddit's default subs for many years and it's shocking that they've crawled that far down into the clickbait gutter.)

Stuff like this isn't the result of some faceless software algorithm that's only harming people because of 'bugs.'

Consumer abuse isn't an emergent property of algorithms. They're designed, by people, to abuse consumers.

Take Google back to court.

The judiciary will not be happy with Google seemingly taking a reprisal against you for wining against them in small claims court.

It might be worth speaking to a lawyer to see if you can seek punitive damages.

You have actual recourse--through TLD registry procedures or the courts--should your registrar Googleify your domain.

You have no effective recourse should Google Googleify your Gmail account.

The argument that customers chose to be ripped off by opting for 'free' is not supported by evidence that paid services are any more accountable.

Anyone who's had to deal with Google support for paid business accounts will tell you that the situation is barely any different for paying customers. Things might be different for very large businesses who are spending millions per month, but that's hardly relevant to how Google might handle email customers hypothetically paying $9.95 a month for a personal mailbox.

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I do not understand why anyone defends consumer abuse by businesses. Unless they work for said businesses, or own their stock, there is absolutely nothing to gain by siding with an abusive business over an abused customer. The business isn't going to reward their supporters' loyalty by treating them better.

Collaborating with hostile entities is not a redeeming quality.

Like the results of a numerical integration, the long term is the sum of all the short terms that came before it.

Long term damage is the inevitable consequence of too many bad short term decisions.

Poor short term leadership damages societies just as a poorly maintained codebase rots from accumulated technical debt.

I feel my point is clear.

People who advocate that Twitter should not exercise editorial control over content are hypocrites for using HN's community editorial control tools to suppress, or remove, content that they don't agree with on HN.

People who value free speech as an absolute right in virtually all contexts have no business curtailing what they argue is an absolute right when it is exercised by people who have views they disagree with.

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As a substantive question, I agree that Twitter is large enough that it should be regarded as an infrastructure platform, akin to the phone carriers, and should not be expected to unilaterally decide on the fair bounds of political speech. That much power does not belong in the hands of any one CEO. Absent a more suitable long-term legal framework to combat propaganda, however, unilateral action is the best of a set of very bad choices. The political situation in America is far too dangerous for potential disinformation to spread unchecked.

If there is truth to the NY Post story, it will be corroborated by other news outlets and will eventually find its way to Twitter via that route. Until that happens, however, October surprises of potentially dubious validity should not be allowed to spread unchecked.

It's highly ironic that the so-called defenders of free speech have torn through this HN thread downvoting and flagging posts that support Twitter's specific actions or anti-disinformation efforts in general.

Free speech for me but not for thee, much?

To those of you who have done this, or don't have a problem with it, or are about to downvote and/or flag this post, think carefully about if you're actually defending free speech or only speech that you agree with.

It's ironic to be championing the virtues of free speech in reply to a completely innocuous post that was flagged to death.

The only reason measures to curb disinformation would have a partisan impact is because conservative parties (throughout the industrialized world, not just in the US) use disinformation strategies far, far more than do other parties.

Center-left/left parties use reality to galvanize their base voters into action. Their voters are people who aren't pleased with what's happening in their countries and want to change it for the better. There's no need for center-left parties to lie that their electoral opponents eat babies when their electoral opponents actually put children in cages.

In contrast, right wing parties overcome the inherent unpopularity of their revealed policy platforms (running on platforms of cutting taxes on the very rich while making life harder for the average person is not popular) by using disinformation to make a stated platform based on fabricated wedge issues. Hence, the imaginary convoys of South American migrants that were about to storm the US-Mexico border in 2018.

As such, restricting disinformation will have a partisan impact. Within the US, there is no Democratic equivalent to Qanon, so anti-disinformation measures that impact the likes of Qanon will have no impact on the Democratic party whatsoever.

Functioning societies must have zero tolerance for 'alternative facts.' Disagree over goals and interpretations, but facts must be accepted by all. Democracy requires an informed electorate and there can be no functioning democracy when one side is free to invent its own version of reality.

That's not an equivalent issue. Employees, like consumers, need their money much more than employers (or more to the point, senior managers and shareholders) need it.

Wealth and income both have a decreasing marginal utility.[0]

[0] https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/12309/concepts/diminishin...

> What is with all these people talking as if the American right and left are just two regular sides of the same political coin without addressing the massive elephant in the room.

The (GOP) elephant in the room uses 'both sides bad, vote for the Republican' as a strategy with the more educated segment of the electorate. Except for people who criticize both parties from the hard left (well left of Bernie Sanders) and the very hard right (the few people who think Trump isn't extreme enough), 'both sides bad' talking points generally come from Republicans who aren't open about their party affiliation. It's not an honest argument--indeed it's a form of subjective disinformation in and of itself--but it's effective with a certain demographic that is over-represented in the STEM sector.

That demographic is people who behave like this

https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/

in response to mild suggestions that, just maybe, some of the benefits of the past 75 years of economic and technological progress should be shared a little more evenly.

The only reason measures to curb disinformation would have a partisan impact is because conservative parties (throughout the industrialized world, not just in the US) use disinformation strategies far, far more than do other parties.

Center-left/left parties use reality to galvanize their base voters into action. Their voters are people who aren't pleased with what's happening in their countries and want to change it for the better. There's no need for center-left parties to lie that their electoral opponents eat babies when their electoral opponents actually put children in cages.

In contrast, right wing parties overcome the inherent unpopularity of their revealed policy platforms (running on platforms of cutting taxes on the very rich while making life harder for the average person is not popular) by using disinformation to make a stated platform based on fabricated wedge issues. Hence, the imaginary convoys of South American migrants that were about to storm the US-Mexico border in 2018.

As such, restricting disinformation will have a partisan impact. Within the US, there is no Democratic equivalent to Qanon, so anti-disinformation measures that impact the likes of Qanon will have no impact on the Democratic party whatsoever. This, however, isn't a bad thing.

Functioning societies can have zero tolerance for 'alternative facts.' Disagree over goals and interpretations, but facts must be accepted by all. Democracy requires an informed electorate and there can be no functioning democracy when one side is free to invent its own version of reality.

> Why should they have dropped the price on the phone?

Because price gouging is immoral.

If Apple was on the margins financially and needed to raise prices to stay in business, that would be one thing. Apple, however, is replete with surplus assets and is taking hard-earned money from other peoples' pockets simply because it can.

There are an awful lot of far more economically productive uses the proceeds of Apple's defacto price increase could be put towards instead of further enriching Apple senior management and shareholders.

While I doubt there's a server in each branch managing account balances, there's is some kind of branch-related weirdness involved in bank account management at some banks.

With some banks, if you open a bank account at a branch in one time zone but later move to another time zone, your transactions will still be processed according to the business hours where the account was opened.

I know someone who is in this situation and they can't make transactions for several hours towards the end of the day (after midnight in the originating branch's timezone) because their bank's online banking front end can't agree with the bank's backend system about what day it is.

The US already has gone down that route.

Most of the Islamist terrorist plots federal authorities have 'broken up' over the past twenty years have involved undercover agents leading on people who are too dysfunctional to be dangerous to do things for which they can be convicted.

Identifying a coin from orbit is almost certainly physically impossible due to the diffraction limit[0] and the maximum payload diameter of existing space launch vehicles.

As for the PRISM replacement, it's fair to assume that the NSA simply buys whatever social contact graphs it wants from Facebook and commercial data brokers.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction-limited_system

'Politically-motivated violence waged against civilians in violation of the law' (excluding situations of organized war) is the most likely the least controversial definition of terrorism.

I'm curious why you appear to imply this definition of terrorism is unsuitable.

Arbitrary account bans already impact more substantive business services. It's not that rare to read of situations where small businesses have had their Amazon stores, Gsuite, Google Ads, or Google Store (publisher) accounts arbitrarily banned with no recourse.

It's notable how much consumer abuse is on the rise lately, with businesses cutting wages for their employees, increasing prices, and cutting services, to punish us for not buying enough useless crap.

In most cases, consumer abuse, like withdrawing 'unlimited' services, YouTube demanding users sign in, or Autodesk removing Fusion 360's personal use tier, net the abusive company little to no additional revenue. Their purpose is to exercise dominance over end users for not behaving the way the abuser feels entitled to.

The entitlement here comes from companies that lie about providing 'unlimited' services but whine about being taken advantage of when people actually use these 'unlimited' services.

Advertising a service that a supplier has no intention of providing is called fraud.

If you think about it, it's deeply depressing how much incredibly interesting technology (and cumulative human effort) goes into portable computing devices that have the primary commercial purpose of forcing people to look at advertising.

There's something deeply wrong when the best purpose humanity can find for all the effort that goes into things like 5G and EUV lithography is to use it to keep people addicted to Facebook and unregulated gambling ("game with in-app payment") apps.

The degree of confidence in your dismissal is odd given how prominently Facebook's emotional manipulation experiment has been covered by major market media outlets. See, e.g.:

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/technology/facebook-tinke...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-...

Not all disinformation is too gray to identify objectively. Much of it consists of objectively false information that is fed to the uninformed.

Take, for example, the long-running Republican voter suppression tactic of using targeted messages to mislead demographics likely to vote Democratic into thinking that the election day is later than it is.[0] This is objectively false information: the date of elections is officially determined, widely published, and not subject to differences of opinion. Entities which spread this kind of information are engaging in disinformation campaigns.

Other trivially identifiable disinformation campaigns include claims that 'urban liberals' were setting fire to rural areas in Oregon, claims that the IFR for COVID-19 is no worse than that for influenza, and conspiracy theories that push hydroxychloroquine as a miracle cure for COVID-19. There's no gray area with any of these issues; the lines they push are objectively false and are socially destructive.

Dealing with information gray areas is hard, but an awful lot of disinformation is trivial to identify and wouldn't be difficult to clean up if it wasn't beneficial to large piles of money with close ties to social media companies.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_Unite...

Indoor air pollution is mostly carbon dioxide, combustion byproducts (in houses with propane/gas cooking appliances), volatile organic compounds that offgas from plastics, paints, rubbers, and similar materials, and assorted particulate matter.

Underfloor has to be done right (installed on materials with a very low thermal mass) or it will be horrible in buildings that have a highly variable heating load.

Underfloor systems applied directly to concrete subfloors will take many hours to change temperature. In climates with a large spread between daytime and nighttime temperatures, such underfloor heating systems will either overheat the building during the day or be unable to ramp up quickly enough to heat at night.

Also be aware that underfloor heating systems are only compatible with a subset of flooring materials and don't like area rugs.

Look at the multi-zone minisplit heat pumps from Mitsubishi and Daikin. These systems support room-by-room zoning. They'll do air conditioning in any climate and can be designed to provide heat in conditions down to 5 to 10 degrees below freezing.

If you're in a climate that gets colder than that, get either baseboard heaters, or a zoned boiler system, for backup heat for when the heat pumps can't keep up during cold weather. Which option makes the most sense will depend on how cold it gets and for how long.

The housing affordability crisis is caused by a set of polices designed to protect the equity of existing property holders by artificially constraining new housing supply and allowing a non-trivial numbers of properties to be removed from the long-term housing market by sitting unoccupied or being abused as short term rentals.

Further affordability pressure is also caused by the proceeds of corruption and organized crime being used to buy/hold housing as part of money laundering schemes. The sums of criminal money involved in the housing market are non-trivial and have been estimated to account for upwards of 5% of housing valuation in some cities.

Construction costs do not enter into this at all.

If you want to address housing affordability, only three things will make a difference: get rid of NIMBY vetoes on new construction, require all properties that are not owner-occupied to be tenanted, and severely crack down on money laundering through the real estate market.

That's an overly pedantic definition of bricking. The car's in state where is is unusable without intervention from the manufacturer. There's no technical difference between this an a 'bricked' motherboard, cell phone, or other piece of consumer electronics: the hardware is not destroyed, but it's unusable unless the manufacturer is willing to fix it.

The only difference between this bricked Ferrari and a phone bricked by a bad firmware update is that the Ferrari is worth enough that it's worth while for the manufacturer to fix it.

From my perspective, the fact that so much of computing has consolidated around a language that cannot support even the most rudimentary code completion or static analysis tools is deeply unfortunate. As a result of Python's mass adoption, uncountable thousands of hours of developer time have been wasted hunting down bugs that would have been caught by tooling in any statically-typed language.

Unless Python can fix this, by adopting static typing, it's not entirely fit for purpose in the ecosystem niche it has come to dominate. Replacing Python with a better language would be a net productivity boon for developers and scientists almost everywhere.