qubax

> Sitting down and actually grasping a full book is becoming a rare skill

Nope. People are more literate today than 70 years ago. People are better educated today and have more schooling. On average, more people have read a full book than before.

Strange to think that people are nostalgic for an era were women ( half the population ) were discouraged from going to college and minorities were denied equal access to education. Even stranger that people think that people were better educated then.

It's statistically impossible for your version of the past to be true.

Hard to tell whether this is a news article or an ad for the featured company.

Also, tech has been in real estate for a very long time. Zillow, Trulia, Redfin, etc were supposedly "disrupting and revolutionizing" real estate before smartphones got popular. I remember reading about this more than a decade ago. My god time flies.

From 2007.

Redfin On 60 Minutes Tonight – Real Estate Market Disruption.

https://techcrunch.com/2007/05/13/redfin-on-60-minutes-tonig...

Zillow has created a real estate revolution.

http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive...

The previous right to be forgotten was limited to only search engines operating in the EU. Meaning, google didn't have to remove the data itself, just the entry to the link in the index. GDPR is far more onerous in that it applies to all data processors everywhere.

"The ECJ ruling only enforced the right to erasure on search engines operating in Europe. The proliferation of personal data that is available online extends far beyond their indexes. It's often exploited for the benefit of others, and their motivations may be contrary to the wishes of the data subjects. It will now be extended to all data processors."

https://www.techworld.com/data/could-right-be-forgotten-put-...

I don't believe in "right to be forgotten" period. That's quite orwellian. The data must flow.

Just a question. I saw this thread more than a day ago.

"32 points by prostoalex 1 day ago | past | web | 32 comments"

https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=wsj.com

How come it's on the front page with "32 points by prostoalex 7 hours ago"

How did "1 day ago" change to "7 hours ago"?

The point of capitalism is to consolidate power around capital rather than a monarch, political party, government, nation or voting group. It's why capitalism can work in a democracy (US), communism (China) or monarchy (british empire). The point of capitalism isn't to escape it. Social or corporate advancement isn't capitalism. It's just everyday life. No more than a peasant in the soviet union progressing up the state ladder is communism. Capitalism is about who really runs things and who gets to have real power. In monarchy, it's obviously the king or queen. In communism, it's the politburo. In a military dictatorship, it's the general. In capitalism, it's the capital ( or those who control it ).

> Theoretical computer science isn't science, it's maths, just like theoretical physics.

Yes. Theoretical physics is theoretical. But physics is not. Computer science is purely theoretical. It's math. Adding a theoretical designation to computer science is being redundant.

> But there are plenty of empirical studies in computer science that are certainly science.

Plenty of "empirical studies" that you failed to name one? There are engineering tests for computers and algorithms. But there isn't a "science". What natural law is postulated within computer science?

You can use computer "science" like any other math to do science, but it isn't itself a science. It's a mathematical tool.

The problem with "studies/research" today is that most of it cannot reproduced, not that it went nowhere. It's not really a matter of "cleaning up" the research to make it "positive". In other words, most science today isn't real science.

Throw in the issues of funding ( government - political issues, private - corporate issues ) and there is very little incentive for real research. And with the current academic environment at leading institutions like Yale, scientists probably are too afraid to do research honestly on sensitive topics.

Also, isn't this just a rehash of another nytimes article from last year?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/29/upshot/science-needs-a-so...

There are 3 or 4 nytimes articles on the frontpage. At this rate, how long before the entire frontpage is just nytimes? Just redirect hn to nytimes and be done with it?

It isn't a science period. Computer science is mathematics, not science. Alonzo Church and Alan Turing ( the fathers of computer science ) were mathematicians. Algorithms is a mathematical/logical concept.

> you will see a metro area that was and still is being shaped by race.

In NYC, a major example is Robert Moses' Cross Bronx Expressway which "conveniently" cut through large swathes of minority neighborhoods. But it's not just the metro area. It's the entire country if you consider the extermination of the natives and the formation of the reservations ( easily the poorest regions of the western world today ).

> A poster has been down-voted to oblivion for pointing out the hypocrisy that the bluest states have the most un-affordable housing

Sad to say, that's to be expected. I had someone go through my history and downvote all of the comments. It's strange that people are so invested.

I'm so sick of the self-righteous moralizing and bullshit by the tech elites and the news companies that help push that narrative.

Brian Acton didn't create whatsapp to "do good". Facebook wasn't created to "do good". Google wasn't formed to "do good". People create companies to make money. Why is this so hard for people to understand?

The guy spent 3 years creating a silly messaging app and growing a userbase and sold it for $20 billion. It's like winning the lottery. Maybe he feels guilty. But stop with the patting of one's back and pretending to fallen saints.

He knew well enough what selling whatsapp ( a company that didn't make a single penny ) to facebook for $20 billion meant. Monetization. I would have also sold a shitty messaging app I worked on for 3 years to FB for $20 billion. But I wouldn't go around pretending I was a saint who got hoodwinked afterwards.

Besides, even if the guy didn't sell to FB, he would have had to monetize and sellout eventually because he had venture capitalists to satisfy.

These slimeballs are trying to eat the cake and have it too.

> Why not?

Because it's important ( national security level important ).

> Korea and China dominate the manufacturing part, why should search be any different?

Korea and China dominate the manufacturing part of search? What does that even mean?

"Social science". The term science has been appropriated by so many pseudosciences that it has lost any meaning. Because real science has such a good reputation, all the academic frauds have decided to link their field to science to enhance their own reputation. There is political "science", legal "science", economics, etc.

Here is richard feynmann's poignant take on the matter. BTW, it has gotten way worse since feynmann's interview.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWr39Q9vBgo

> China will not allow a foreign company to compete against its home grown search engines, so why bother?

No. China will let a foreign company compete against its home grown search engines under its own terms. There's no way we'd let a chinese company take over search in the US. Why should they allow an american search engine take over?

> By bowing to Chinese censorship, Google hurts its public image.

Google has bowed down to european and american censorship. What difference does it make if they bow to chinese censorship? You don't seem outraged at google censoring in the US and Europe.

> In short, the people at the top of Google look like fools to me.

Yeah. The multibillionaires look real foolish with their multibillions in the bank. Google execs don't care what employees think. It's not their job. They work for the shareholders, not their employees. Considering how well google's stock have been doing, it doesn't seem like shareholders are too shaken up about google getting back in china.

The faux moralizing is getting ridiculous. Especially when a significant portion of people on HN are demanding more censorship at home.

> On Android I use Firefox with [1] and [2] for YouTube; the former lets me turn the screen off without letting YouTube know that the screen is turned off.

The problem is even if the screen is off, youtube still sends the video data to your phone. It would be nice if youtube gave us an option of "audio only" streaming so only the audio is sent. Currently the only work around is downloading the audio using youtube-dl.

Recent? There have been spurts of uproars about google ( and tech/social media ) for a while now, nationally and internationally.

After obama won in 2008 and 2012, there was conservative/republican backlash against tech/social media amd it's "negative" impact on election. There were people saying that the saudis, chinese and even the russians were exploiting social media to help obama win the election and divide/destroy the nation. Sound familiar? The democrats and the establishment media laughed at these claims and called them conspiracies, delusions and republican being sore losers. Funny how an election changes everything.

The recent uproar is directly tied to Trump's election. Now it's the democrats and establishment media attacking tech/social media because their candidate lost. So the democrats and the media are complaining the same thing the the republicans did after their candidates lost in 2008/2012.

When obama won, it's was how great social media is. The NYTimes was praising social media for helping obama topple the "clinton machine" and john mccain in 2008.

"fight smear campaigns and get out the vote that helped them topple the Clinton machine and then John McCain and the Republicans."

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.htm...

Even in 2016, people were praising social media and obama.

https://www.engadget.com/2016/01/12/president-obama-social-n...

The hypocrisy in the political and media landscape is quite something huh?

As for the international scene, from china to egypt and beyond, governments have been upset about google trying to manipulate their people and cause disruption. With the recent revelations of how political google truly is, I guess they were right and foreign governments are going to demand lot more control over google in their countries. You reap what you sow.

Yeah blockchain seems like overkill here.

But the world of corporatism is just as susceptible to fads like every other subculture.

It's like execs are desperate to force blockchain on every problem because it's the hip new thing. Even though most problems don't need blockchains and there are far better and simpler solutions.

Similar to the nosql fad. Who needs ACID compliance? If things fail silently and we lose a few transactions here and there, what could go wrong? Get with the times. The cool kids are into nosql now.

GM should name their next model "The Abyss" - "when you stare at it, it stares back at you".

Seems like so much of the tech/business ecosystem is now centered around spying on you. Your OS, amazon's echo, social media, laptops, etc.

> I'm cruious, who imposes that fine

The executive branch can ( via executive order, treasury sanctions, etc ) and of course congress can.

> and how do they enforce payment?

By threat of financial collapse.

> Can the US Government FORCE a French Bank to pay them a fine?

Yes and no. Are we going to invade france and force the bank to pay the fine? No. Could we threaten to place sanctions on the bank and exclude it from international financial system. Yes.

> Surely a French bank could just say "no thanks".

It can. But then it would immediately collapse. No international bank can survive a US sanction because the US runs the international finance system. There is reason why the swiss banking system submitted to US demands to turn over customer data a few years ago. Economic sanctions on switzerland would turn it into north korea or venezuela.

People mistakenly think that US sanctions means that the US won't do business with a certain country. US sanctions means that everyone doing business with the US can't do business with a certain country.

US sanctions essentially forces the world to choose between the US and country X. The US being the largest economy and the heart of the international financial system wins every time.

It's why there is so much drama with US sanctions on iran. It's not that we won't do business with iran. It's that everyone who wants a business relationship with the US can't do business with iran.

Except if it is a too-big-to-fail bank and there is systematic risk, the taxpayers will have to bail it out. A bank that controls half a nation's banking is systematic. The government will bail it out. If things get bad, the EU/ECB will bail it out.

One of the benefits of running large banks ( and insurers ) is "privatize profits and socialized losses". These bankers and insurers can't lose. If they gamble and win, they get the rewards. If they gamble and lose, everyone else has to foot the bill.

> By constantly playing on the offensive, they've put Facebook and Twitter on a constantly defensive posture worried about being called out as having 'liberal bias'.

Jack Dorsey and Zuckerburg said their company had liberal bias. We know google does.

> The fact that Jack had to personally intervene to stop his employees from banning Alex Jones (after numerous egregious violations) speaks to the power of this approach.

Alex Jones got banned anyways. For things far more benign than say what sarah jeong wrote.

Stop it. It's been proven that there is bias. The only question is what, if anything, should be done about it. What's with the blatant dishonesty here? How can there be an honest discussion when people outright lie?

> Since when does the government get to police ideological speech, or complain about "bias"?

It's the standard in most of the world. In parts of europe, you could go to jail for political speech and the media is tightly controlled.

> They must be very careful not to let the narrative become "we don't bias our results, we swear!" (even if it's true)

You know it's true.

"Facebook, YouTube, and the like are publishers.

As a society, we did not have qualms before the internet about publishers declining to amplify the views of people like Alex Jones. Even in the absence of YouTube's support, he arguably has far more of a voice now than he did in the pre-internet days, before he could host his own website. He has that on top of all the traditional means of communication he always had, which includes passing out flyers and yelling in the street.

It is the responsibility of information disseminators to curate their content. Nobody is going to jail over these editorial choices, so the notion that this is a constitutional issue is pure hysteria. YouTube and Facebook are finally stepping up to the responsibility they have long owed us from the beginning."

Why don't you have any principles or consistency? You support corporate censoring when people you dislike gets censored. You support government censorship when people you you gets censored. Is that a bit hypocritical?

Yeah, that number seemed low to me as well. I always assumed there would be more rodents in a city than humans. Odd to see that there are a million more humans than rodents in barcelona.

So "clear browsing history" ( from all time ) really doesn't do what it says anymore? It doesn't even clear youtube history? Wowsa.

If google is this bad, I wonder what microsoft is really storing. I wonder what ISPs are storing. Also, this type of news doesn't give me much confidence when it comes to android either.

This type of stuff happened a lot during the dotcom bust. It seemed like good times would last forever. People would get hired with great salary, options, benefits, etc and fly across the country to start their new jobs only to find the business had shut down. It's insane. These companies would hold job interviews and hire people knowing full well they are about to go close shop.

It is normal and expected for the executives though. Somehow, even in the worst bankruptcies or closures, they always seem to end up with golden parachutes. Must be luck.

> Once you reach a certain size you can continue to squash competition through sheer momentum.

Not momentum. FB and Google lost their momentum a long time ago. What they have is power and market share. What google, facebook, etc are doing is no more different than what standard oil did in the late 1800s. Get big enough so that any other competitors has to either sell out or die out from underselling or external pressure ( manipulated railroad shipping prices, etc ).

Even if you have a good idea to compete with google or facebook, you aren't going to be able to get funding. Banks and VC aren't going to help you since many banks and VC are invested in facebook. Why invest in you when there are better opportunities out there.

Say you had a great search engine, but in order to get anywhere, you need to get "defaulted" on chrome or firefox. Good luck with that. Google is never going to let you be the "out-of-the-box" default on chrome. And you aren't going to outbid google for default status on firefox.

Once someone reaches monopoly status in a particular sector, it's hard to challenge them since they control almost every aspect of the environment. You either have to wait for the environment to change or move into another field. Or you need government intervention vis-a-vis window/internet explorer antitrust case.

> I've always adapted a policy of using my real name as a moniker on social sites.

That's a terrible policy. Anyone can create a username as you then and post offensive things and you'd be screwed.

> This is stuff everyone learned in the 90s bubble.

This is stuff every generation learns during every major recession. During the boom times, when business is good, the company treats its employees well and everyone thinks the company will always take care of them. Recession hits and reality smacks you right across the face.

> That's a broad brush to paint with; companies are just a group of people, not some inhuman construct.

Companies are a group of people hired to make money for shareholders. They owe loyalty to shareholders, not their workers. It's actually the fiduciary duty of the board and the execs.

> Not every company discards employees like garbage, and it's a lousy narrative to propagate.

Of course not. But the point is they will if they have to.

Companies exist to generate value for shareholders. Not to be nice to their workers. When times are good, you have nothing to worry about. But when things get tough, all bets are off.

Of course. It's common sense. As the rest of the world gets more industrialized, wealthier and better educated, it's inevitable the awards will be less concentrated in one place. It's keep spreading out as time goes on.

It's not just nobel prizes in science. It's billionaires list, chess rankings, supercomputers list, top polluters list, top colleges, everything.

China by itself has more people than US and Europe combined. India by itself has more people than the US and Europe combined. ASEAN has more people than europe. If they are able to continue to develop and contribute, it's inevitable that their share of the prizes will increases sooner or later.

What's tragic is that the opportunity costs for them being so underdeveloped. How many geniuses and entrepreneurs were wasted because of lack of development and opportunity? How much human progress have we left of the table as a result? It's sad to think about.