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Most of the time, comments that don't add anything of substance to the conversation get downvoted or flagged at HN.

I had the same impression. He says things which are demonstrably untrue, it implies a lack of domain knowledge. But, on paper anyway, he has the domain knowledge.

I agree with the idea that the right time to decide how to handle AI is before it becomes extremely powerful. But he uses so much hyperbole, and what seems to me to be intentionally inflammatory language for purposes of creating fear.

It makes we want to take the cynical perspective that he's trying to cash in on fear to create a (valuable) following.

Have you looked into high res projectors? Prices for the decent ones are comparable to TVs.

To add to this, basic fingerprinting is trivial. And more advanced fingerprinting isn't much harder.

I'm so confused by GP post. We were doing fingerprinting 15 years ago.

I generally agree that tech monopolies are potentially bad for, not just national security, but general human wellbeing.

> The tech sector is out of alignment with law enforcement

In this particular case, I'd say that's a good thing. Law enforcement, and certain three letter agencies, have a terrible track record here. If big tech is making it a little harder for them to bypass basic privacy rights, I'm ok with that.

I don't think it's counter productive at all. There was a period of time, when the appendix was (absurdly) considered vestigial, that surgeons would remove the appendix as a side quest if they happened to have the area opened for some other purpose.

That was a terrible idea, but one that was supported by science at the time. There are practical reasons to be skeptical about scientific assumptions.

Science becomes less wrong faster if we allow history to remind us that a lot of what we believe will likely turn out to be wrong.

I agree, and also it's easy to forget how silly "Web 2.0" was

Not the technology itself, that was great, and was already named.

When Web 2.0 arrived as a buzzword the web was already an interactive, dynamic platform with databases, server and client side scripting, user generated content and social networking. All of the technologies involved were in fairly widespread use.

For a minute the term Web 2.0 might have been a way to recognize how cool the natural evolution of the web was, but it was quickly co-opted for use as cutting edge sounding investor bait. Same general principle as Web 3.0, but with useful technology.

Side note: The Web 2.0 hype was mostly a 2000's thing.

Because sometimes HN hugs things to death. I went straight to the comments for the alternate link when the site was still loading after 10 seconds.

The ecological problem is, in my opinion, what should lead the conversation.

Climate change being what it is, we shouldn't even be considering technologies with carbon footprints as large as existing blockchains.

In theory that problem is solvable, but in the present, it should be a deal breaker

Abuse of that system being a when, not if, scenario.

There are of course a variety of factors, including the popularity of the site the page is published on. The signals related to the site are often as important as the content on the page itself. Even different parts of the same site can lend varying weight to something published in that section.

Engagement, as measured in clicks and time spent on page, plays a big part.

But you're right, to a degree, as frequently updated pages can rank higher in many areas. A newly published page has been recently updated.

A lot depends on the (algorithmically perceived) topic too. Where news is concerned, you're completely right, algos are always going to favor newer content unless your search terms specify otherwise.

PageRank, in it's original form, is long dead. Inbound link related signals are much more complex and contextual now, and other types of signals get more weight.

I'm not sure how we got to it being strictly about advertising. Nor did I say 'all'. But the vast majority of corporations with the market power to leverage in shady ways for profit, do in fact do just that.

We have plenty of historical data to draw from here. Cynicism is the rational approach.

Corporations (beyond a certain threshold of market control) doing shady, consumer hostile things for profit is the norm. So I don't think the ticking time bomb concept is nonsense at all.

As a recent example, Google was an overwhelming net positive for years. They genuinely made the internet better. But the day they went public their eventual abuse of their market position, intentional or not, became inevitable. We're only in the early stages of seeing what that will look like.

Asking questions about whether we want to help give companies the market position to become abusive makes the most sense early, not after it's already happened.

Your point is valid but it's a question of degree rather than category. The Uyghur camps are about as evil as you can get, no question, but how much cumulative death and suffering has been caused by decades of destabilizing, bombing and invading the middle east? As just one example.

From an outside perspective, no one is buying the US propaganda around the oil wars any more than people are buying Chinese propaganda about their camps.

China being arguably worse doesn't evict the US from the category of destructive superpowers.

I think there's value in being honest about that.

The claim is partly based on the fact that the majority of people stop producing lactase (the enzyme needed to digest milk sugar) at an early age.

Well aged cheese has little to no milk sugar, the cultures have eaten all of it. So, problem solved.

Hold on, when did anyone introduce the idea that a company won't make a right decision ever? That's a pretty dramatic mischaracterization of my comment.

It's so easy to find something 'patently absurd' in a comment if you aren't bound by the actual content of the comment.

Maybe there was something confusing in my choice of words, given the downvotes.

I don't think HN is naive enough to think that large publicly traded companies genuinely make decisions based on moral concepts like right and wrong. If they do the right thing, they do it because they see an advantage in it. That's how they're designed to function.

For profit companies don't make decisions because they're right. Right and wrong have no meaning in capitalism. Companies make decisions based on profits.

We might wish it were different, but it very clearly isn't.

The best we can hope for is that public pressure convinces companies that right and profitable overlap.

There's some truth in what you're saying, but mistrust of institutions is completely rational in light of history. Empirically, ignorance in this context would be unskeptically trusting institutions.

That it strays into the irrational at times is as human as the inevitable corruption that fuels the mistrust.

For someone without full knowledge of the technology to assume (in this case wrongly) there's a privacy issue is entirely practical. It's an assumption that will be correct far more than it won't.

To my surprise you used you're instead of your in a comment about precise language.

Not a crime, a reality, cheers to anyone who tries to keep that reality at the forefront of the conversation.

As superpower mascots go, I think the eagle turned out to be pretty much perfect. Large, powerful, masters of their environment, noble from a distance. Up close, easily scared, shameless scavengers who love the opportunity to steal prey from other creatures.

Note: No intention of starting a political conversation, as a resident of said superpower I just love the irony.

I suppose I should have added basic equipment as a barrier to entry, it seemed self evident as I was writing.

Edit: I think you could call Windows mainstream (or becoming dominant) around version 3, maybe a bit before. So that's over 30 years.

> Will this ever end?

It remains an interesting question. Is there any way to reclaim the autonomy and ethos of freedom from the earlier part of the digital era?

I'm not sure how that would look. I don't mean in terms of a set of hardware and software solutions.

I mean technology that's actually for the end users, available to everyone with curiosity as the only barrier to entry. It sounds like a utopian delusion even though it existed not so long ago.

I'm not sure there's a realistic way to get there from here. I'd love to be wrong about that though.

I agree that Google is slipping... but DDG is essentially just a Bing syndicator, which means their result quality will compete at the rate of Bing. Hard to see a threat there.

Lots of truth here, and some cathartic hilarity.

> "Any code of your own that you haven't looked at for six or more months might as well have been written by someone else."

It goes on to say that even six months is optimistically high.

Genuinely curious, is this true for most people? It feels a bit hyperbolic to me.

I generally agree about slogans, but that seems unfair here. "Choose Boring Technology" isn't the sum total of the content, it's essentially the title. If you read past it, there is good stuff.

"a new search engine that cannot be gamed"

So you mean a search engine that's 100% human curated? Or rather, a directory, it wouldn't really be a search engine.

Any algorithmic signal can be gamed. Although I'd be curious to hear how I'm wrong about that.

Just a note: Your front page text doesn't wrap on mobile (android), requiring side scrolling.

When it comes to the precise details, I imagine there aren't many people who know for sure how the convoluted machinations of money and policy played out on a particular issue. It's the nature of the game to keep it as opaque as possible.

If we find out, it's usually many years down the road and it's rarely as direct as "grain outbid eggs". There are behemoth consumer food manufacturers involved, pharmaceutical companies too (statin drugs are a cash cow). Lots of industries profit or lose based on public health decisions and perceptions.

Every once in a while it's pretty direct though, maybe the most well publicized example in recent years: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074...

Not sure why your post is getting downvoted, the evidence for it's accuracy isn't in question that I know of.

Real question: Does anyone think that food industry money doesn't influence policy and recommendations? If so can you provide some sort of supporting evidence for this view?