There have been many articles on the subject, but this is an excellent, deep dive into techniques and technology, including a lot I haven't seen elsewhere.
12,788 karma · joined April 2, 2014
Speaking more generally, despite the promise of the Internet it seems like the more valuable knowledge is inaccessible to the public - knowledge in books and scientific journals. The public is left with the dregs.
People complain about how easily bad information and deliberate misinformation spread and are accepted. In the context of my point above, is that a surprise? Remember the old saying about management and accounting systems or really any application: GIGO: Garbage in, garbage out.
> In 2006, just 1 percent of all U.S. commandos deployed overseas were in Africa. In 2010, it was 3 percent. By 2016, that number had jumped to more than 17 percent. In fact, according to data supplied by U.S. Special Operations Command, there are now more special operations personnel devoted to Africa than anywhere except the Middle East — 1,700 people spread out across 20 countries
> Ambulances have been called more than 100 times since 2014 for workers experiencing fainting spells, dizziness, seizures, abnormal breathing and chest pains, according to incident reports obtained by the Guardian. Hundreds more were called for injuries and other medical issues.
EDIT:
I wonder how it compares to other factory workers. To what extent is the problem factory work (which so many are anxious to bring back) and to what extent is it Tesla's factory.
And Musk seems to have a bit of a tin ear, which is surprising:
> The CEO said his desk was “in the worst place in the factory, the most painful place”, in keeping with his management philosophy. “It’s not some comfortable corner office.”
> In early 2016, he said, he slept on the factory floor in a sleeping bag “to make it the most painful thing possible”. “I knew people were having a hard time, working long hours, and on hard jobs. I wanted to work harder than they did, to put even more hours in,” he said. “Because that’s what I think a manager should do.”
> He added: “We’re doing this because we believe in a sustainable energy future, trying to accelerate the advent of clean transport and clean energy production, not because we think this is a way to get rich.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-cloudflare-helps-serv...
Even if Cloudflare wants to use the extreme libertarian justification of enabling all speech no matter what it says (which I strongly disagree with, but that's another discussion), AFAICT they don't address why they are giving people's personal contact information to the hate groups. It wouldn't make sense anyway, and at least some of these groups openly threaten and practice harassment. What does that have to do with supporting freedom of speech?
... and you'll have an OS for which neither malware authors nor legitimate software developers want to write applications.
There's a trade-off involved. We could all use pen an paper and be invulnerable to malware, but then how would we post on HN?
Wipe the laptop and reinstall. It's more certain, and probably won't take much longer than trying to remove the malware. If the malware infects firmware or other subsystems below the OS, and thus won't be removed by a reinstall, buy a new laptop if that's an option.
... the lab with ties to Russian intelligence, who are suspected of leaking the NSA tools.
Nobody on the Internet seems to know what it is (based on my 5 minutes of looking). Does anyone on HN know?
An honest question; you are not obligated to do my research but maybe you know.
The jobs and the welfare of individuals are the top priorities IMHO, but I'm not sure there is a great problem. This isn't at all a new situation.
If you look at the jobs of a century ago in advanced economies, most of them are gone yet employment now is relatively high. Just think of the homemakers who were displaced by the automation of home care (clothes washers and dryers, vacuum cleaners, etc.); that might approach half the population. There's also textiles, mining, factory work, etc. It's a regular process: Productivity improves, less labor is needed in one area, and so it shifts to something more productive. If it wasn't for that creative destruction, there would be no software developers; they'd all be in the mines and fields.
What is different this time? I've heard all sorts of speculation, but I haven't heard anyone with expertise seriously analyze and address it.
There are problems: To me the essential issue is that while the economy in aggregate grows through this process, individuals don't live in aggregate; they suffer (and sometimes gain) tremendously. The economy may grow 4% in aggregate, but most people don't get 4% richer; some lose 100% of a job (and house and children's education, and even healthcare in the U.S.) or gain 100% of a job. Perhaps that is no longer acceptable to us; it's not to me. The factory may move to a different part of the country, and in aggregate the economy marginally grows (there are the same number of factories in the country and we can assume it was moved to increase productivity), but all those individuals lost jobs.
In addition, some research shows that a large segment of the population hasn't been getting wealthier for decades; only a few are. For example,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/05/08/resea...
Could you provide more detail?
* 14 million is a big number, but it's less than 5% of the U.S. population. I do agree that it's a serious concern, but because of the welfare and economic opportunity for those people, and because of the social disruption of economic inequality; the economy in aggregate is doing well. For those interested, you can find the numbers here (you can adjust the years at the top): https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000
* Debt is a bad word colloquially, but in finance / business / economics, it's actually a great efficiency: Instead of useful resources (e.g., money) sitting around unused (e.g., in a vault), they are lent out to others to make productive use of. Financial institutions are like Airbnb for money - others get to rent your asset while you don't need it, and you make something from it. Borrowing is fine as long as you are generating more income from the borrowed funds than it costs you - e.g., as long as the software you build with the borrowed funds earns a better return than the interest you owe. Generally, that works out well or people wouldn't have a reason to lend or borrow.
* As of December 2015, of the total U.S. federal government debt, 40% was held by foreigners. Interest paid was $94.9 billion that year. The U.S. economy was ~18 trillion that year, so the debt service was ~1/180th of U.S. income; not a problem. Source: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS22331.pdf
In contrast, in the U.S., even the NY Times publicized the Russian material regarding the DNC. The French media said they had to verify the Macron material first, which is normal journalistic procedure, especially given the 'anonymous' sourcing and the likelihood that it was a foreign intelligence agency. I didn't see the NY Times or others even raise that question (and FWIW I wrote them and asked, but never got a response).
I learned recently that the DNC IT team actually told Podesta that a phising email was legitimate and that he should act on it urgently,[1] and the article says that the Clinton people ignored FBI warnings. Macron's people seem much more on the ball, based on the story, but maybe they shouldn't publicize their methods.
----
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/08/world/europe/macron-hacki...
[1] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/10/28/13456368/...
While personally I wish there were more political issues discussed intelligently on HN - we shouldn't imagine that we live in an enclave safe from the very serious political situation - I will say that the recent discussions have been the most uninformative, valueless, wastes of my time that I've seen on HN in a long while. It's not hopeless; around the time of Trump's travel orders, for example, they seemed much better (and were allowed on the front page).
Fundamentally, the size, i.e., the output of the economy is easy to compute: Inputs (resources, such as labor and capital) x Productivity (how much benefit is wrung from the same resources).
The inputs generally increase. One major input that increases is labor. As the population grows, there are more people doing productive work. Productive workers, which is almost everyone with a paying job and very many without one (homemakers, volunteers, etc.), produce more than they consume - an important point. It's not a zero-sum situation; adding people doesn't reduce everyone's slice of the pie, it makes the pie bigger.
Productivity also increases. You see it in SV every day, with better and better software, as one simple example. Every improvement in knowledge and technology, in every field, adds to productivity. Is there a limit to productivity? It's hard to imagine, but if there is then we're nowhere near it.
> Everyone is very highly incentivized
Or maybe the evidence is very strong. For example, is everyone is incentivized to believe the theory of gravity, or is the evidence very strong?
I know the guidelines object to Most stories about politics ... unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon, but that is enforced very unevenly. The top story, last I looked, was about politics, as are many others.
I know moderating is thankless, so many thanks. :)
P.S. IMHO it would be useful to answer on the guidelines page or FAQ. Answers in a thread probably won't be seen by most readers; for all I know, you've already answered several times.
EDIT: For those interested, here is some recent discussion of it by dang, but not really addressing this question directly.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-06/buffett-s...
What about their employers?
I think unions are painted with a very broad stereotype by people who don't know them (including most people on HN, I would guess) and held to different standards than businesses, many of whom are notably corrupt.
Adding workers adds wealth per capita; it's not a zero-sum situation. Adding more workers to the economy grows the economy, by more than the salaries of those workers (if they cost more than they produced, they wouldn't be hired). Now all these women are producing value, they increase productivity, and they also can afford to buy things from you.
Consider it this way: Where would you rather open your store, a town where only the men work, or where both the men and the women work?
I assume you mean, the size of the economy has peaked. The rate of growth was never thought to be increasing (i.e., it didn't grow 4% one year, 4.1% the next, etc.).
This question is answered by well-known data, GDP growth. That popular number represents, effectively, the increase in the economy's size every year. The U.S. economy has grown and continues to grow every year since 1950, with the only exception being 2008, the worst year of the Great Recession.
It's more complex than that, because those same voters are pressuring their elected representatives to retain healthcare subsidies and similar benefits.
> I would say that a struggle shouldn't necessitate a clinical diagnosis. Life is full of struggle, and equating struggle to depression to medication is why we're in the overprescription business in the first place.
I know critics repeat that narrative often but I haven't seen evidence of it actually happening. That is, I haven't heard anyone say, 'struggle is a sufficient condition for the diagnosis of depression', and I'm almost certain that the standards for diagnosis in psychology/psychiatry are much higher than that.
> overprescription
I'm not sure that's true either. Certainly there are always some false positives, but what is the rate? The evidence does indicate there are very many false negatives, people who need help and are not getting it.
I suspect the narrative of overprescription for psychological conditions is based in part on two things: 1) People with preconceived negative attitudes toward mental health care, and 2) variation from the norm they are accustomed to, which is that few or no people received mental health treatment.
Regarding the latter reason, perhaps there was a problem with the old norm; perhaps many more people need mental health care than we knew. When there is a new treatment for cancer, we don't say 'it's overprescribed; in the old days we toughed it out.' We don't say that about lead in water. If it's helping people, it's a good thing, and I want to society to move forward, for people to be healthier and happier and not be stuck in the conditions of the 1970s (or whatever the baseline is).