robbrown451

> The worst case scenario would be that Duckduckgo is actually secretly run by Google and the data being collecting from the service is being used to help fill your dossier at Google but if that's the case we're never going to know about it until a whistleblower comes forward.

The problem with this (and most other conspiratorial thinking) is that of course a whistleblower is going to come forward.

Are you thinking that every employee of DuckDuckGo that knows this (and many would have to), is paid so highly as to just be quiet? That not one of them thinks, "hey, it would be fun to be famous? It would be fun to expose this thing that is suddenly going to make me a hero to millions? I could write a book about it afterwards and make a ton of money..."

And of course, Google would consider this in the first place. Like "maybe this isn't a great idea, because secrets like that are hard to keep? And maybe this could destroy our company and that kind of risk isn't a great idea?"

A game like Wordle seems fall more or less halfway between a copyright and a patent. There is a lot of gray area on this one.

Right but if there is an archive, and you can play indefinitely, the concept of "today's word" loses its meaning.

And people might start going to the archive instead of the main site, seeing as it has a major features the main site doesn't. (i.e. ability to keep playing) Obviously they don't want that. They want 100% of your concentration to be on today's word. They want you to look forward to tomorrows puzzle where you can play again. Playing archived games decreases that, as you can satisfy your craving that way.

I sort of miss the archive, but at the same time I am glad it is gone. I like that feeling of "I'm done with Wordle for today" without that nagging "but I can do 100 more .... now where did my morning go?"

This is a rare case where I support a company being protective of its IP.

The game is copyrightable, of course.

(and words, well, of course. Books are words, right?)

They could offer an archive themselves if they thought that was a positive. They don't, and to me the fact that you can only do one a day is a brilliant yet counterintuitive strategy that helped get Wordle popular. But that strategy is defeated if others offer what they choose not to.

I really like the idea of them being able to say "don't worry, you can't get overly addicted because we only offer one a day and don't let you binge." And as owners of the IP, they do have that right.

Is "engine" the right word for this? I'd call it a generator if anything. I thought an engine took in power and output mechanical energy.

I understand there are other kinds of engine, such as a gaming engine etc, but in this context it seems like there are better descriptors. "Heat to electricity converter"?

The "but what if everyone did it?" argument doesn't make sense and shows a lack of understanding of basic supply and demand.

The more people want to buy credits, and the fewer people willing to sell them, the more the price goes up. If someone is willing to pay me $100 to walk a mile to work, I'm going to walk a mile to work. Jeff Bezos probably won't, but that's ok.

The point is, the price will stabilize at an equilibrium. If this sort of thing didn't work, our whole market economy would collapse almost immediately.

Is it possible the car was given instructions to do that, to get out of the way of traffic? The place where it is initially is awkwardly near a "parklet" (outdoor dining area in a former parking spot) as well as right at an intersection and fire hydrant.

That seems like an expensive option that solves very little. Whatever the infraction is, it is just as likely to be repeated by any car in the fleet. Better for the police to have a way of dealing with it and document it so it get addressed. Certainly whatever agreement the company has with the city can address this, including the company possibly paying per-incident money to the police for their time.

I don't think that's the part that is "ivory tower." It's the attitude of "you should never use this feature that you rely on unless you are doing one very specific thing that necessitates it" as opposed to just saying "let's design it in a way that such things can be done easily and without violating the spirit of the language."

> Hiding a "noprocrast" option in settings, and perhaps advertising it once per user with an annoying easy-to-dismiss popup – that sounds exactly like the kind of ineffective tweak that would pass muster

That seems like how a company would game regulation, while a judge or jury can better say "that's just an ineffective tweak".

Regardless, if facebook and instagram etc implemented something like that, it wouldn't really need a popup, since users who know about it can talk about it and recommend it in their feeds.

I generally wouldn't define algorithm as such, although I can see where the lines between them can become blurry.

Confusing headline, it seems to imply that all algorithms are going to die, like we'll just stop using algorithms. Obviously that doesn't make sense, but that is what it sounds like.

I also question whether we are talking about algorithms, or the data set they are working with or the model created from that. I can forgive confusing an algorithm with its implementation (e.g. the source code), but this goes beyond that.

>What would that mean?

Ok, one example: implement such features as the "noprocrast" feature HN has. Normally companies don't have an incentive to do that, since they want you addicted even when you don't want to be.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3677390

> If the government wants to regulate fine, the government should do it. Not via civil lawsuits.

The advantage of lawsuits vs. regulation is that the lawsuits can better adapt to changing technology and various things that can't be anticipated ahead of time, and is less likely to have loopholes and be gameable.

Creative features such as "noprocrast" can't really be regulated, but they can give protection to a company in a civil suit. I'm sure there are a lot of other features that could be developed as well that will help reduce addiction and reduce the tendency for "enragement to equal engagement".

Remember, the lawsuit happens after harm has allegedly been caused, and a judge or jury can use common sense to decide if the company has acted irresponsibly.

Neither is perfect, but there are certainly advantages of doing it this way.

While we're at it, can we please get rid of leap seconds? (which we don't know are going to happen until ~six months beforehand?) Just wait until we are off by a full minute, and then we'd know at least a full decade ahead of time when the next leap minute will happen.

I don't understand the need to have it so precisely align with astronomical measurements (to the nearest 0.9 seconds) when we already do so much roundoff due to time zones, daylight time, etc.

Well it is a red panda, i.e. a firefox. In fact, "Turning Red" could be seen as a metaphor for switching from Chrome to Firefox (in addition to, uhhh, the advent of menstruation).

Maybe if they had managed to sneak some product placement for Firefox into the movie it would balance things out and make it seem better.

In all seriousness, I don't like it either, but I wish the question wasn't so unnecessarily hostile ("Disney shit") toward a Pixar movie that I and my young daughter found quite delightful. That kinda makes me want to defend Mozilla.

What's your point? You're saying you could apply 7th grade algebra to this problem and make these cars considerably safer, but that the people working on it now just don't bother? Because they're evil? Or what?

I don't know what to say.

You are mixing competence with agenda. Which is it? If you are concerned it is not as competent as a human, fine, that's defensible.

But that's not what you said. You said you were concerned about its agenda, that it would be intentionally prioritize the lives of its passengers over other lives (and even suggested it would prioritize the preservation of the vehicle itself more highly)

you said....

>I think the real concern that the car is actually programmed explicitly to kill you if it has to, to ensure it's own safety or the safety of it's riders or something.

My comment was about that....the "agenda" issue, which is 100% what your comment was about.

To be clear (if I wasn't in a previous message)

There is NO incentive for it to be explicitly programmed to do that, since the company could be equally sued by pedestrians as it could by passengers.

There IS incentive for a human to behave that way, since natural selection built a self protection motivation deeply into the human brain.

There is also very strong incentive AGAINST prioritizing protection of the vehicle itself over any human -- passenger or not. For both human drivers and driving software programmers.

Anyway, you seem to be changing your argument to one of competence, which to me is a completely different discussion. (I think self driving cars are better at some things and humans are better at other things, but eventually cars will be better -- or at least equal -- for the vast majority)

Are you saying that they don't work hard to avoid having their cars hit pedestrians? Really?

And no, this isn't "junior-developer grade software routine." They also don't want the car slamming on its brakes in the middle of traffic because a plastic bag blew by in front of the car.

I think a human is far more likely than a car to have a self-protection tendency.

If a car is programmed that way, how does that benefit the car company (or the programmer)? It's just a different family that sues them if someone dies that didn't have to die. Are you thinking they could advertise it as "prioritizes your life more than random other people!" That's just begging for a lawsuit.

And they especially wouldn't program the car to protect itself above a human life. Why would you think it would? The car is not nearly valuable enough to outweigh the cost of a lawsuit.

So, don't go onto public roads at all?

Sad story.

I hope she reconsiders naming her daughter for the girl who died tragically.

My sister was named for a cousin that, as a baby, fell out a window to her death, a decade or so before my sister was born. When my sister was a couple weeks old, my parents realized that they didn't want to think of that tragic story every time they said my sister's name. So they changed her name to one without the emotional baggage.

There are other ways to honor someone's memory, that don't affect your relationship with your new child.

"If you're getting bombarded with "you there?" from 20 people because some service they use has gone and right now you're trying to fix it for them all, well that can be stressful too."

Well it depend one what your job is and what your relationship to that person is. I wouldn't send a "you there?" to someone in IT when I need something fixed. But I would to someone I've had an ongoing working relationship with and when we communicate, there is typically more that one single issue to discuss.

"If someone wants to have a synchronous conversation, I want them to state that."

The people that I would send a "you there?" message understand that my message is shorthand for that. They might respond with "in a meeting" or "gimme a few minutes" or if they are available for a synchronous conversation, "hey" or "what's up?"

I have a couple contacts that are "on the spectrum" and I deal with them a little differently. They seem to need things spelled out a bit more explicitly. But those people tend to get left out of many discussions, and don't seem to do as well careerwise in the long term, because they don't really connect on a human level with people.

Yeah, it depends on who I am talking to. If it is someone I am fairly friendly with, or family, I'm less likely to do that. If there is a single topic that is why I am reaching out, sure.

I often will say "you there?" or "you busy?"

This means I don't have a single question, it means I want to have a synchronous conversation. There are lots of reasons for the latter. This is what I would prefer people do with me as well, and if I am busy, I feel like I can ignore the message until I have a few minutes to talk (often with voice/phone)

I say this as someone working from home, thousands of miles from most people I work with and also far from most people I communicate with socially online (such as family). I find this approach of "just send a question and they can answer asynchronously" to be one of the reasons that working from home can be damaging to mental health. Natural human interactions, where there can be a real time back and forth, are positive things. Not necessarily always, but especially if I haven't communicated with a person in weeks, I'd much prefer this sort of thing.

If there is a specific topic I want to talk about, that can be expressed in a few words, sure, I'll say that. And if it really is just a simple question that can be answered directly, I'll just ask. But the point is that those are not always the case, and depending on the job each of us has and our relationship, it might be unlikely for that to be the case.

Some software developers are self taught and do fine. The problem might be that you are referring to it as a "profession." It is for some, but for others it is something they might do more casually, and that should be ok.

Would you agree that a teenager should be able to build a widget for a local business's web site for money? Or should a license be required to do that? Should that same teenager have to get a license to baby sit or mow lawns? Presumably you don't think of baby sitting or lawn mowing as professions, so that's the difference.

Maybe a license should be required to call themselves a "software engineer." But beyond that, I think this article views things in way too black and white terms.

Am I so wrong to stop reading after a grammatical error on the very first word in the article?

https://www.google.com/search?q=everyday+two+words+or+one

Interesting. I wish it didn't require it to be to charity, and wish it had better ways of judging outcome, and wish it allowed any bet (too many requirements as to bet type). But still interesting.

Heh yeah well I would probably never actually do a long term bet with anyone over the internet, unless I was well known like these guys are, so they can't really hide.

That said I wish there was a good site that allowed doing bets like this online, where you put the money in up front, and deputize a list of people to be judges to decide the winner. (yes it would typically be shorter term than 8 years, and obviously there would have to be rules for dealing with what happens if the judges aren't all available, incentives to reduce the chance of that happening, and so on)

I imagine anti-gambling laws make it difficult to do such things. But I can wish. It would reduce the number of people making poorly thought out assertions as to the future.