Luck was required, but not sufficient. What are the odds that, while bumming around, you'll meet a guy who singlehandedly built an awesome home computer, and needs someone to market it? Jobs took initiative he wasn't the only one who knew Woz, but was the only one to use that opportunity. But, on the other hand, if he never met Woz, there'd be no Apple - so, lots of luck was required.
You can luck your way into being a super Type A manipilative boomer with good taste before personal computers became a thing, before everyone was effectively required to have degree, and knowing a hobbyist electrical engineer who's capable of making a computer from scratch and not Type A.
I mean everyone knows this right? There are even leaked memos. They are public companies who need to grow revenue and they gain that revenue mostly through ads and attention.
You don't need billions of dollars to write an app. You need billions of dollars to create an independent platform that doesn't give the incumbent a veto over your app if you're trying to compete with them. And that's the problem.
I think algorithmic content recommendations must be banned from social media. Its too powerful wrt influencing the masses. People should go back to just seeing content from their friends.
People do get addicted to bikes. Not even questionable. But of course that's not a charitable interpretation, and on that - yes I don't think personalized content is comparable to heroin. What is so evil about personalized content?
I'm sincerely trying to understand. Your whole argument here is based on the premise that TV is OK because it's not personalized.
Yes my entire argument is that recommendation algorithms are designed to cause addiction. Some incredibly smart people have been working on this and they have succeeded wildly. And without personalised content the problem goes away. And that the problem is most acute in short form video platforms like tiktok, instagram shorts and youtube reels. And yes I do consider it closer to drugs than ..... bikes.
OK, but is it a problem if you get recommended repos on github? What I mean that perhaps it's not the good recommendation algorithm that is the problem? It seems like banning tcp/ip because porn is bad.
In China for example (IIRC) below 18 you cannot use these apps past some hour and not above some time limit per day. That seems far from correct solution but seems better than banning it outright and seems to be addressing most concerns.
Personalized content is crucial for functioning information platforms. Imagine if usenet had a single group only. The information sea is vast and the ways to browse and access it seem to only be diminishing. Relaying solely on LLMs outputs does not seem like a safe bet. We've been living off black boxes outputs since altavista, but it's nice to at least have many different black boxes to chose from.
(HN is very much a FYP, it's just that.we like similar stuff)
> OK, but is it a problem if you get recommended repos on github? What I mean that perhaps it's not the good recommendation algorithm that is the problem? It seems like banning tcp/ip because porn is bad.
Please stop trying to compare social media recommendation algorithms with stuff like github. Its clearly a different animal with different set of business goals. And noone is saying ban tcp/ip. TikToks recommendation algorithm is not a fundamental building block like tcp/ip. I think you would be fine without it.
> In China for example (IIRC) below 18 you cannot use these apps past some hour and not above some time limit per day. That seems far from correct solution but seems better than banning it outright and seems to be addressing most concerns.
Sure thats fine too. I think my solution is better.
> Personalized content is crucial for functioning information platforms. Imagine if usenet had a single group only. The information sea is vast and the ways to browse and access it seem to only be diminishing. Relaying solely on LLMs outputs does not seem like a safe bet. We've been living off black boxes outputs since altavista, but it's nice to at least have many different black boxes to chose from.
The algorithms today are still a black box. You don't know "why" certain content is being shown to you. You don't know which political party paid to show you what kind of ideology. I personally know facebook used to show hateful anti-(your opposite religion) posts in India during election times. You could click "i'm not interested/report the content" and they would still show you the same stuff. It only stopped after election season stopped. These companies are being paid to manipulate you.
> (HN is very much a FYP, it's just that.we like similar stuff)
It is user curated and everyone sees the same leaderboard of posts. No personalisation. I'm fine with such simple curation.
Sincerely want to understand it, now that there's more comments it seems I'm not the only one but in minority. Currently most interesting dimension to me is how big part of HN is effectively against open access to information and supporting censorship but of course within this discussion context that's me misrepresenting those people who only want to save lives.
Suriously though, decent part of posters probably were around when WWW was effectively born. Tell me it was not addictive and not full of harmful content. I'm pretty happy it was not banned despite, unlike TV, providing personalized information that you were seeking.
Stocks might go down if AI doesn't bring in enough revenue. The real risk seems to be currency depreciation though. The USD is already down 15% this year compared to the Euro. I'm worried about what the next FED chair appointee will do. JPow has stuck to his principles so far.
> The USD is already down 15% this year compared to the Euro.
It's down 12% since a year ago, but that's largely a reaction to the tariffs. It's been fairly stable since July or so and has only seen a small dip (and partial recovery) in the last couple of weeks.
The admin wants to cut rates drastically. But the FED policymakers just voted 10-2 to not cut rates. So I worry the admin will try something crazy to force a cut.
Is it really seen as “the real risk” if it is something the current elected president very explicitly said for decades he wants to do? He does want USD to go down in value. He said it, repeatedly, openly. He made very clear why he went after Powell (that he himself reappointed).
It’s more, exactly what we should expect than a risk no?
If you want to understand the goal of the administration, read Stephan Miran's 2024 paper titled "A user's guide to restructuring the global trading system" (the author is the current chairs of "Council Economic Advisers", the paper is casually called Mar-a-lago accord...):
The TL;DR is something like: use overvalued due to reserve status => devalue 40% via tariffs + threatening to withdraw military protection from allies who don't comply
You can find more sources and videos with fairly basic googling, such as multiple interviews from the 90s (or 80s?) with Larry king, Oprah, and way more, none of that is hidden
falling usd is a disaster in a consumption economy like ours. fuels inflation. makes investing in usd-denominated assets less attractive. it's not going to boost exports due to tarriff walls. there's no silver lining here.
> The USD is already down 15% this year compared to the Euro.
False in every sense possible. For starters, the year is only a month old. Second, it’s been pretty stable for the past 6-7 months, and is only down 12% from a year ago - not 15%.
Seems like the rest of the world is just signing new trade deals and continuing on as normal. I hope America returns to normalcy in the next election and everything settles down. Else it seems like back to the old multipolar world.
I don't see any way we're not heading back to the multipolar world. They've managed to burn almost all of the goodwill and soft power that took 80 years to accumulate in 373 days.
Even with a "return to normalcy", the trade and military agreements being forged are permanently diminishing America's influence. Especially given that we're never more than 4 years away from this happening again.
Objectively in the sense that there are actual causes in you life that distress you and cause your symptoms instead of thinking your life is shitty because you are depressed. Of course being able to determine if it is your depression talking or if things are objectively bad isn't easy and people often need outside help from a therapist for that. Plus it isn't really clear cut in practice.
On a sidenote, I know that knowing that it is "just your depression talking" is also a pretty hard pill to swallow and not always helpful. Personally I have a lot of fears that I know are irrational but that doesn't make them any less real.
And even if your problems are external, sometimes you need to focus and your inner self first, find some strength and help so you can tackle the external problems later. But for other people "working on yourself" can be avoiding the actual problems they need to work on.
I don't think that's true. I think that just shows how disconnected we are.
We tell ourselves that we must have "better lives" than say a native american in the year 1000AD, but there's no reason to think that.
I think odds are that maybe the native american was happier -- having a small group that you spend time with outdoors every day, getting extensive exercise, having a clear sense of purpose, eating healthy fresh food every day, never once thinking about politics or bills or global warming. I bet they liked their life more than a depressed divorced accountant in our modern society, even if we have more material wealth or health access.
I guess there are different types of "life sucks" that can or cannot contribute to depression, my current understanding is that a lot of it depends on whether you feel you have some control over the situation or if you think you have absolutely no power over it
According to Victor Frankl (psychiatrist concentration camp survivor, author of Man's Search for Meaning) being in a shitty situation without any control over it isn't necessarily bad. Humans can still be mentally okay in the face of extreme unavoidable suffering like in the camps. The key thing is that you need to have some purpose / meaning in life (often a loved one or dependent).
Isn't people in the past had less control? There were dying from infections and not only had no vaccines and drugs they didn't understand how infections are spread. They also suffered from various natural disasters not having a protection a modern civilization gives us.
I don't know enough about how people lived in the past but I would tend to agree with you that they might have had less control than us on many things. But what I meant was that it depends on how much control you *think* you have rather than the control you actually have.
So I think a lot of it is about perception, in 100 years time people might wonder why we weren't all depressed because we had a life expectancy of "just" 80/90 years, but for us it's just normal and expected
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