As Ebola outbreak rages, vaccine is 97.5% effective, protecting over 90K people - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/04/ebola-vaccine-is-97-5-effective-early-outbreak-data-suggests/ <comment><USER2> This is one of the things that really makes me hopeful. A few 100 years ago, something like Ebola could have easily devastated civilization. Now, we have come up with a way to treat people who have it and more importantly to prevent people from getting it, even if exposed. This is truly amazing, and despite all the problems on the horizon gives me hope that human ingenuity and cooperation will win out in the end over our challenges.

<comment><USER3> > A few 100 years ago, something like Ebola could have easily devastated > civilization

As little as 5 years ago (2014 outbreak is deadliest occurrence), it was difficult to contain and spreading rapidly, it took significant travel limitations to contain it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think it depends on what percent of the Ebola affected territories are anti- vaxx.

I think they might be against it for animistic reasons.

</comment><comment><USER5> > The rVSV-ZEBOV-GP Ebola vaccine, made by Merck & Co, contains a live > attenuated virus harmless to humans that researchers genetically engineered > to carry an Ebola glycoprotein.

This took a few reads for me to get right</comment>


Any open source porn blocking setups? - <AUTHOR> I'm fed up with watching porn, but I know very well I am addicted to it. Does anyone have any suggestions for a good porn blocking setup?
e.g. I access a porn site and my computer shuts down after showing an "uplifting" message.
Edit: I'm single and don't intend on starting a romantic relationship at the moment. <comment><USER2> You started off by asking about technological solutions, but my first observation is that this isn't a problem you can likely solve by those sorts of means.

My second observation is: is it really a problem? Most of the supposed porn- addicts I've known have not actually fit the definition of addiction, "pleasurable but the continuation of which becomes compulsive and interferes with ordinary responsibilities and concerns, such as work, ...". _Is_ it _really_ an addiction? Are you late to work because you're watching porn? Do you find you don't have time for anything else because you watch porn? I can only figure that the US's puritanical roots cause people to so frequently conflate daily porn use on the order of 15 to 30 minutes with "addiction", when it clearly will not fit the bill for addiction.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do understand that using tech to ease my adddiction may not be very effective. However, I do think it is worth a shot. After all, it is the nature of the Web that has made porn use and/or addiction so prevalent.

My addiction does greatly affect my life and occasionally ruins my productivity. Sometimes I would stay up until 2AM watching porn while perfectly knowing I have to wake up early the next day. So yes, I would really describe it as compulsive.

That said, I think an addiction could include a 15-20 minute use. I'm strongly against porn (multitude of reasons), yet I watch it, which points to my being compulsive. 15-20 minutes doesn't seem like a lot, but I still consider it precious time that's wasted.

<comment><USER3> You could go through the list of sites on the EasyList for adblock - which are full of porn site ad block rules - and block those sites. You can change your hosts file to redirect to localhost or perhaps to some website that reminds you to quit viewing porn or offers you something else to think about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Get a long term relationship where you're not alone. A woman who would turn off your computer and show you something "uplifting"[1] when you're tempted to watch porn.

[1] Whatever it maybe for you. :-)

<comment><USER5> Not every lifestyle permits intimate relationships. And not everyone can just snap their fingers and "get a long term relationship".

<comment><USER6> Exactly what kind of "lifestyle" doesn't permit an intimate relationship? Being a Catholic priest? Being a hermit like Unabomber Ted Kazcinski?

If your lifestyle doesn't permit an intimate relationship, which is one of the best things about being a human, then you need to find yourself a new lifestyle.

<comment><USER7> You might be suffering from depression that is crippling enough that it would be cruel to ask someone to be with you.

<comment><USER6> I guess when I hear the term "lifestyle", it seems to me like a way of life that's voluntarily chosen, rather than imposed by medical problems. Also, this was a response to a HN user asking about his particular situation, and no mention was made of any serious medical or psychological problems (other than a supposed "porn addiction") which would understandably make finding a long- term relationship difficult.

I do agree with the GP that not everyone can just snap their fingers and "get a long term relationship", but for someone who has no other obvious impediments to one, and thinks they look at porn too much, my advice is to at least _try_. It seems obvious to me that the excessive porn is an outlet for frustration from not having a real relationship with a real human. There's only one reasonable way of solving that IMO, and that's going out and finding (or trying to find) such a relationship. Trying to turn yourself into Buddha is not reasonable IMO; people are supposed to have intimate relationships.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm pretty involved in the open source software world in this space. I'd recommend you'd look into these two projects below. Neither of them are a "filter". In my experience though, filters are marginally useful anyways.

[https://netresponsibility.com](https://netresponsibility.com) \-- is accountability software. It monitors the sites you visit and sends reports to a friend of sites it thinks are "bad". This, in my opinion, is far better than filtering software because it forces you to have a conversation with your partner about what went down and why. It has gotten pretty stale and the current released version is basically non-working because dependency updates have broken a lot of things. A few devs are working on the next version (v4) on and off trying to get it off the ground. It works well, just needs more testing and more contributors. This runs on *nix and osx.

[https://fasterscaleapp.com](https://fasterscaleapp.com) \-- is a tool to help you become more self-aware of your emotional status and why you feel whatever way you feel. Addicts are notoriously awful at identifying what they're really feeling (and people in general are worse than they might initially think). The idea is that as you become better able to identify the direction you're headed in you can take actions to prevent a relapse or acting out BEFORE you get to that point. Both of those projects are OSS and the repos should be easily findable from those websites.

Both of these projects would really benefit from help, contributors, and just regular users. Net Responsibility has a forum and mailing list that you can get involved in. Faster Scale App is not quite as organized, it's just one guy working on it.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've heard it said that to kick an addiction, you have to achieve a mental change where you stop _wanting_ the thing you're addicted to. Consider someone who is addicted to overeating. He could go on a _fast_ for a while, as long as he has the willpower, but eventually the willpower is going to run out and he's going to cheat. By contrast, if he were to make a positive decision to become an athlete, or a bodybuilder or model or something, he would be able to control his diet not as a strenuous act of self-deprivation but because he now sees himself differently, as someone with a mission, and snacking starts to seem really irritating to him.

So my unsolicited advice is that you need to come up with a way to see yourself differently. Maybe as a man of faith. Maybe as a mountain climber or something. Consider giving yourself a mission that will get you the heck out of your apartment and take up all your free time, so that your addiction becomes an annoyance that you won't want to bother with.

And good luck!

</comment><comment><USER10> I suggest you figure out what you are getting out of it and find another way to get that which lacks whatever downside you feel this has.

My opinion:

Porn can be "addictive" because there is a significant emotional component to human sexuality and porn mostly gets a rise out of people by being shocking, which is why so much porn apparently revolves around social taboos (interracial, group scenes, barely legal in terms of age, etc). But the more you watch it, the more inured you become, so you need to move on to even more shocking things to get the same effect.

I think people suggest relationships as a solution because emotional intimacy can get that same strong emotional response without needing to keep upping the ante in an unhealthy way.

Do with that personal opinion what you will.

Best.

</comment><comment><USER11> You can just set your dns to a provider that blocks porn. [https://www.raymond.cc/blog/how-to-block-pornographic- websit...](https://www.raymond.cc/blog/how-to-block-pornographic-websites- without-spending-money-on-software/)

Secondly if this is a addiction then you should seek a help group. There is a AAA style meeting for everything.

Finally best of luck.

</comment><comment><USER12> Why all the moralizing, when codesmoothie is asking for a technical solution?

Yes, porn is destructive. Codesmoothie didn't ask for our feelings on it. Just answer the question.

One thing I'd recommend is using OpenDNS. They have policies that allow for blocking that kind of material.

Codesmoothie in addition to whatever technical solution you decide on, I'd recommend asking a trusted friend to hold you accountable, like someone else suggested.

Have your trusted friend put the OpenDNS settings in your router and have him set (and keep) the password for your router.

</comment><comment><USER13> [https://selfcontrolapp.com/](https://selfcontrolapp.com/), [https://freedom.to/](https://freedom.to/), and [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/momentum/laookkfkn...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/momentum/laookkfknpbbblfpciffpaejjkokdgca?hl=en) are useful braces for building healthier habits around internet use.

</comment><comment><USER14> Modify your hosts file to block all porn domains. Here is an extremely popular list on github: [https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts](https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts). It can block malware, adware, porn, gambling, and social sites. I personally use it for all of those and have been pleased so far.

</comment><comment><USER15> SimpleBlocker is a chrome plugin I use to block out distracting websites.

Here's what I did:

1) Installed RescueTime

2) 1 week later looked at my most visited websites and made a list of all I didn't want to visit again.

3) I added them to Simple Blocker and set a random password.

Now, I can't use chrome to access those sites, unless I uninstall the plugin. And, I've made a deal with myself that I wont uninstall it for atleast 2 months.

Anyway, tools can only help. At some point you just have to do it.

</comment><comment><USER16> You can set up Raspberry Pi firewall using centOS and Raspberry Pi. This setup will work at network level and it is open source.

Here are instructions:

[https://opensource.com/life/16/3/firewall-your-home- network-...](https://opensource.com/life/16/3/firewall-your-home-network- raspberry-pi)

You can Google about Raspberry Pi Firewall to see other setups.

</comment><comment><USER17> Any technical limitation you put on your laptop/phone/tablet/etc/etc/etc will easily be circumvented by yourself.

Give a close friend $1000 and tell him to keep $100 for each time you find yourself failing at your task. Of course this relies on you being truthful to yourself/friend but since it's on your initiative anyway, it might work.

No idea if this works.

</comment><comment><USER18> The best case would be if your internet connection ITSELF whitelisted out porn/viruses. Apart from massive government intrusion--and criminal penalties from circumventing your assigned whitelist--the best you can do is fix your modem/ISP connectivity (anything device side is trivial to circumvent).

It SHOULD be trivial to have a whitelist operating via a hardpoint like your modem or your ISP. But sadly, the market does not offer such options--and enabling your ISP to block any particular traffic means they have to sniff it ALL out.

But the reality is: you can just buy a different modem or ISP.

And if that isn't the case, you can just stare at women in bikinis at the beach or the nearby pool... or the slightly short/tight skirt or loose blouse of your co-worker... or the professionally dressed news caster on TV... or pictures of Mother Theresa in her habit.

Well, maybe if you wean yourself down to nuns in habits, I suppose you might be cured.

But the reality is that you are under a spell, and you don't quite realize it. Call it sin, call it "not a struggle against flesh and blood but against powers and principalities," call it addiction, call it some psychological/emotional disorder....

No matter what, you are under a spell, a trance, a stupor... like the spell the King of Rohan was under by Wormtongue in Lord of the Rings. It IS poison that you drink daily, but you haven't really woken up to the fact.

The power of addiction is that it convinces you that it isn't really there, or that it really isn't self destructive. And everytime you go back to it, it gets to keep whispering its lies and pouring its poison into your ears while you sleep, and while you stumble half-awake otherwise.

So... you either need to so fully suffer a tragedy so immense that it snaps you back into full consciousness and gets you seriously down the road of recovery, or you need to get maximally aggressive in getting away from it so you can CLEAR YOUR HEAD.

What I had to do? Get rid of my computer and internet access altogether, except under extremely controlled settings in public with accountability.

It's hard to imagine surviving without the computer and IoT, but humans managed to do without it for 50K to 6.5K years (depending on your faith).

That's the realization I had to get to, and from what I read, my "addiction" was about as light and controlled as yours. Still, at this point, I can see how it was continually poisoning my mind, clouding my thoughts, lulling my senses, turning all consciousness into a constant search for the next hit from the slightest curve or cleavage.

F' that man! There's so many more wonderful/terrible/thrilling things to notice and experience in the world.

Very few escape our sexuality and primal/primary drives, but we don't have to be slaves to them!

Do whatever is necessary to get completely clear for 30-90 days to let your brain start to rewire. You will notice a huge change after just a week!

P.S. Video games are a big problem too. Get clear of the junk.

</comment><comment><USER19> What you describe is going to be very, very hard to achieve.

Looking at this simply from the standpoint of addition for the sake of simplicity, if you cannot utterly, completely, totally (etc) eliminate _every possible chance_ for you to be able to access what you're trying to access. Whatever you try, you will _know_ that _there 's a way to work around it_ and find yourself _surprisingly_ motivated to bypass any limitations you try and impose on yourself.

The best way I can explain this is to reference the example I read that explained this phenomena to me. You can train ferrets to happily sit on your lap and go to sleep, but to achieve this you have to put them on a leash and then make it utterly impossible for them to get off your lap by holding onto the leash and only letting them roam around your lap. It'll take _quite_ a while before they finally give up, accept that they're not going anywhere, and settle down, but they eventually figure out that _there is absolutely no way they can change the situation_ and accept it. Getting _yourself_ to that stage is... you're an IT guy. You can answer that yourself.

On top of that, this whole thing is ten thousand times more intense due to the fact that it's addiction-based.

Now, you could try and get a cellular contract that stipulates an upstream VPN (ie, where the cell signal coming into your phone comes from from a VPN you specify), and do the same for your wired internet (ie, the ADSL/cable/fiber/etc line going into your house also upstreams off a VPN). Configure the server side of that VPN on a machine with a firewall and some scripting that does the blocking. Then, take the private key you logged in with, encrypt that into say a tiny dm-crypt block file, take half the dm-crypt passphrase and keep it yourself, and give the other half of the passphrase to someone else. While the two halves are separate noone can login to the VPN server, guaranteeing noone will snoop or be able to adjust the settings.

So, that would work.... buuut you could very easily just walk down the road and buy a data SIM. Welp.

Unfortunately I think you would need to lock yourself in a room to achieve the kind of solution you're trying to get at.

I saw something really amazing on addiction recently - [http://youtu.be/Sh7YB58EFgU](http://youtu.be/Sh7YB58EFgU) \- which I found on imgur of all places (apparently it has its moments). Being criticized for being in such a position is unproductive and unhelpful, and I can't say I think too highly of the couple of commentators who've replied here and mocked you for being candid, straightforward and honest, and being bold enough to say you need help. Kudos.

My practical/viable advice is this (you're going to have to read between the lines so I can keep this PG-13): I suspect it's probably difficult to do what you need/want to do without the porn anymore, and/or difficult to feel satisfied without it. You're going to need to adjust - in workable increments (enough to pinch a little, but not too much; a disciplined amount) - to get yourself completely off of this extra input. By all means do _continue_ , per se; just without the porn.

Remember that our _enjoyment_ of this whole process is just really, really intricate commentary; the main focus is that this is our way of reproducing. It's not the _sole_ purpose; we've been built the way we have so that we're biologically obsessed with it and find it difficult to _not_ reproduce. It's important, though, to remember that reproduction is the foundation of why all of this sort of thing exists; not anything else, for example getting high for its own sake, or forgetting other things in life, or staying wired, or anything else (I have no idea (and don't need) the finer details of your situation; I'm just pointing out some examples to give an idea of what I'm talking about).

I point this out because you may need to spend some time recalibrating your mental model to something that factors reality into the picture.

The way it's supposed to go is, if you're on your own, you have two options - periodically run the photocopier without any paper to keep the mechanism in shape (</euphemism>), or wait for the process to happen in your sleep. The first approach is what most guys use; the second is the body's pressure relief valve and only generally operates when you're already super tense and overloaded. But _neither_ of those options are _supposed_ to be particularly engaging or enjoyable; they're industrial means to an end. The brain is built to find the process noteworthy regardless of cause, but sex is the _really_ enjoyable version.

However, you've (unfortunately) hyperoptimized/trained/specialized yourself to know exactly what makes you super happy, and you've learned how to continuously provide (= source) the top 1% of input that you really like. That's going to need to be discarded - these skills you've taught yourself are effectively useless - because sex doesn't work quite like that, sex is about communication and balance between two (usually) people.

So I have an odd idea for you. I found this a while ago - [http://www.nateliason.com/multiple-orgasms- men/](http://www.nateliason.com/multiple-orgasms-men/) \- which you may find interesting to throw yourself into. It's sufficiently unusual that if you haven't discovered it before it will be novel and new and help distract you, and it'll also help get you back on track and prepare for relationships. I've heard some urologists freak out about these types of techniques, while others say there's no cause for alarm. I personally sit on the "I haven't seen any actual _studies_ showing catastrophic disasters" fence, so I'm giving this a go myself (the main challenge is remembering to do it, which is proving a little difficult as I don't have a smartphone and can't use the recommended apps).

TL;DR: You need to replace the stimuli you're currently using with other stimuli of some kind. Just flat-out removing it absolutely stupid and not going to work (it'll just backfire very badly and disillusion you in a big way).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your response.

> Unfortunately I think you would need to lock yourself in a room to achieve > the kind of solution you're trying to get at.

While addictions can be so extreme as you described, this doesn't describe me, and I don't think (correct me if I am wrong) it is very typical of someone who would consider themselves addicted to pornography. Typically before my session, I would be in a worse than normal mood, or just really wanting to release. If my computer suddenly locked up for an hour, I would likely "sober up" and go do something else.

> You need to replace the stimuli you're currently using with other stimuli of > some kind. Just flat-out removing it absolutely stupid and not going to > work.

I agree that is very hard to remove a pleasure source all at once, and a plausible route would be to go incrementally. Reading the other comments, I would agree that spending more time with people in general (not just romantically) would be a healthy alternative.

<comment><USER19> Woops, took me a bit to get back to this.

Hm, I think I got completely sidetracked with the concept of addiction when I was composing my initial response. It's completely reasonable to say that I described a statistically unlikely worst-case scenario, and I'm glad to hear your situation isn't that bad!

Looking at it from a different angle, removing high fructose corn syrup and other forms of highly concentrated sugar from your diet is an extremely healthy thing to do; HFCS can become addictive. What we're describing is exactly the same thing, if you ask me; just remove the concentrated/hyperoptimized stimulati, and everything will balance itself back out.

Yeah, it'll be a huge adjustment and kind of depressing to begin with but it's for the best.

As I said in my previous comment, actual sex is what's enjoyable, and everything else is just a means to an end. IMO, guilt-tripping people into thinking "running the photocopier" (if you will) is unconditionally wrong is itself a hugely imbalanced view to have.

Also, /r/NoFap focuses on "short periods of abstinence" \- these might be weeks/months long, but they aren't permanent. I'm honestly not sure how people would abstain, myself.

Spending more time with others sounds like a great idea, but IMHO it cannot be a full replacement for what I describe in the previous paragraph, and trying to treat it as such may cause you to wind up in some suboptimal situations (continuous distraction leading to, uh, _unexpected relationships_ , etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Get married.

<comment><USER6> There was an article in the last day or two saying married Americans were having even less sex now than single ones, so this might not be the best advice.</comment></comment>


How I tried to compete with YouTube and Google with Livevideo.com - <AUTHOR> https://techpost.io/why-you-cant-compete-with-google-the-deplatforming-of-livevideo-com/ <comment><USER3> This article should say - you can't compete with google using google.

The "final blow" was adsense being cutoff. Their revenue model to compete with google was ... adsense. OK.

Their traffic model was google search. Ok.

Between the lines it sounds like some aggressive SEO, and maybe the network click bounce thing (you click on one video, and then it clicks through to another site etc). Be curious what their content moderation story was.

Seriously, if you are building a google competitor, you probably need to use something other than adsense. And a reminder, adsense is a key revenue generation value add.

The paying of creators definitely anti-competitive. I do think there will be a youtube alternative (small scale) eventually.

The problem is a lot of these "competitors" get filled with absolutely trash / hateful content right away because the first people to use them are the rejects from youtube and the moderation teams are so glad to have someone show up they don't moderate heavily enough. Checkout some of the reddit competitors, total disgusting trash.

<comment><USER4> Haven't used reddit in over a year and hardly visit YouTube. #1 competitor for my time is reading a book. The freedom and clarity I feel now that I'm not plugged in to these types of social networks makes me believe reddit is also "disgusting trash".

<comment><USER5> You are painting with a very broad brush. There are tens of thousands of subreddits covering a dizzying array of topics. Many are low information garbage communities, but many are amazing resources that can't be found anywhere else.

I'm not suggesting you change your personal choice, but as someone who is a sometimes member of those communities, I resent being called trash.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > At one point, I believe it was over 74 million and after a Google search > change, that number went down to less than 12 million overnight, so all the > backlinks, all the websites that were linking to my site, that boosted my > rank, that gave my site a good search cloud. This was all organic. I did not > use tricks or anything deceptive. This was all organic traffic. These were > all organic backlinks and all of a sudden Google just decided I'm turning it > off and they did. So guess what happened? My search traffic completely > plummeted.

> I would get called on a regular basis from Google ad execs begging me to put > Google ads on my website.

> Like you basically have to give them their cut, otherwise they're not gonna > let you play and they're going to screw with your search traffic.

Yeah, no, it doesn't work like that. Google search ranking is not perfect, but they have taken search/ad separation very, very, very seriously. You can't even ask questions like "The google ad customer I'm talking to disappeared from search results, did you guys do anything overnight?" It's a big no-no.

It sounds more like a sadly misinformed rant. 90% of startups fail - <USER2> is a natural result. You don't need to bring up a Google conspiracy to explain it.

<comment><USER7> Best practices are being followed now; but a large sales team at its worst more than ten years ago might be caught out in bad behavior.

Less plausible is the scenario of failing as a result of ad-pay for search- play. If the equation is proven out, then he, a rational and effective founder, would've paid!—And his site would've played another day.

Or are we supposed to read an implication that it was worth burning the company to the ground to take a principled stand against 2008 Google?

Meanwhile, the traffic claims defy belief. Livevideo failed to launch.

<comment><USER6> Well, I wouldn't be surprised if, once in a while, an unscrupulous sales rep hinted that they can get their customers favorable search positions after buying ads.

But I would be really surprised if anyone could follow through with their promises.

<comment> the-rc Most sales people at Google wouldn't even know where to start looking. They're more familiar with the ad systems. Heck, a lot of engineers couldn't tell you on the spot where to look or whom to inquire about ranking bugs. Add to that the big gulf between sales and engineering, not to mention the sometimes snobbish attitude of the latter toward the former. ("Sales people take our money and blow it on dinners with clients!", forgetting that the money often came in thanks to sales and that e.g. engineers on average traveled less often, but for quite longer).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Without revealing details -- I worked for this company at this time. I was privy to certain financial details.

Google did not destroy them. A combination of poor business decisions and possibly corruption did. I watched these decisions unfold in person and I won't provide certain details because I don't want to say anything that might be considered libelous, but this guy is straight-up throwing a pity party for himself. It has nothing to do with reality.

Google was not actually evil back then. Did they offer contracts to content creators? Maybe. No reason Live Universe couldn't have done the same.

There actually was lots of adult content on the Live Universe network of sites. Just -- everywhere. Content moderation was ineffective because so much of the community was driven by porn: Users wouldn't flag adult content because that's what they were there for, so massive amounts of it just piled up. Google had every reason to stop doing business with them.

This guy straight-up admits there was child porn on the site and they were engaged in shady SEO tactics then bitches that Google delisted them.

"I literally [built a YouTube competitor" \-- no you didn't, man. You were just an employee for someone who did.

<comment><USER9> > they were engaged in shady SEO tactics then bitches that Google delisted > them.

As someone who did SEO for many years, Google was very serious about eliminating the 'black hat' SEO tactics. They were cheap, they were plentiful. Google eliminated them throughout their index because bad actors were skewing the results. This article does sound like a pity party but it sounds like someone isn't willing to accept they dropped the ball when it was passed to them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> From what I can tell, this is the story of a 2006-2008 Youtube also-ran that was outbid by Google for celebrity content, had copyright and inappropriate content problems, kept an adult content section on their website, and depended on AdSense for their revenue.

I don't see where the concept of "deplatforming" fits into the narrative provided.

You can check their old site out on Archive.org (the pages all seem to have "Family Filter" set, despite the fact that the tag clouds and "Most Popular Videos" callouts seem to have adult content in them).

<comment><USER11> I agree with most of your comment, but Youtube also had copyright problems at that time. Viacom sued them for $1 billion in 2007 (settled out of court for an undisclosed sum in 2014).

<comment><USER12> > _Viacom sued them for $1 billion in 2007 (settled out of court for an > undisclosed sum in 2014)._

(...after the district court found in favor of youtube and after it came out that some of Viacom's claims were for things that other parts of Viacom had uploaded for publicity)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have a hard time believing that their website was more popular than YouTube. I remember using loads of different video streaming services before YouTube was bought by Google (e.g. Vimeo, Google Videos, etc) and I've never heard of livevideo.

Also, Google Videos was Google's own YouTube competitor from before they bought YouTube, which arguably _was_ anti-competitive because it was much easier to search for Google Videos from Google than for YouTube videos.

The more likely explanation for why their search rank plummited is their shady backlinking between their properties.

> The only one that survived was Justin. That eventually became twitch because > they picked video games as a category and just eliminated everything else. > And YouTube didn't really go after one market like that. They went after all > video on the internet, so Google let them kind of have video games and that > was it.

Their explanation for why Twitch succeeded doesn't hold water. My understanding is that video gaming is currently one of the most popular categories on YouTube today and probably has been since the beginning (e.g. PewDiePie started as a video gaming youtuber). They're directly going after Twitch with YouTube Gaming. And Twitch obviously hasn't been deplatformed by Google Search.

<comment><USER14> Also it's not good branding. I immediately thought this was _LiveLeak_ , which is a different site than _LiveVideo_.

But you're right - there are lots of players who carved out niches on the market to be profitable, since hosting video content _is expensive_. Vimeo, Twitch, even _LiveLeak_ , cater to specific content while the generalist Youtube burned money for over a decade. When all the other generalists were pivoting, LiveVideo plowed ahead with something that wasn't profitable. This post-hoc rationalization and finger pointing feels like sour grapes.

<comment><USER15> This was 2006. LiveLeak wasn't a thing yet when LiveVideo launched.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > It wasn't it wasn't anything nefarious.

> you know, adult content and there's child porn on some of your properties > and whatever

> [getting] sued by the major, by the major record companies for [hosting > lyrics]

> Today we get sued by the record companies

I'm not well read on the situation, but it sounds like they had serious moderation problems. It looks like they had adult content on their popular video's page occasionally even with a filter enabled. If they were being de- listed from DMCA and legal complaints, that's on them. A lot of the regulation and laws in this space give a lot of power to copyright holders, and YouTube likely has agreements that give them some leniency that other companies just can't get. I feel like that's less of a Tech Giant problem and more of a massive legal barrier to entry problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Occasionally something adult slipped through but we caught it as quickly as humanly possible.

The government never had an issue with us, and we worked with them. The only company enforcing anything was Google, and they kept moving the goal posts every time we talked to them until it became clear there was nothing we could do to resolve these issues to meet their standards, standards they themselves have not met in the past 11+ years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is interesting. I'm starting to make a computer security course right now and I've chosen to put it on pornhub. The monetization options are better for creators (I can sell videos!). Obviously, pornhub is going to restrict the audience a bit, so I've been toying with the idea of making a video hosting site with solid monetization options and categories of ads beyond porn.

I think the biggest thing I don't understand is CDNs and delivering the video quickly. If I get some traction in the course, maybe I could launch a site with that content. The monetization options on YouTube are just lacking. You have ads or 5$ / mo subscriptions (if you have 100k subscribers).

My model is going to be 90% free videos with just the solutions to assignments paid. I'll make a small bit on ads, but mostly through 1$ video sales. I was going to offer pdf chapters for each module as well, but since ph only allows image formats and it would be a lot of work to write, I've nixed that idea.

<comment><USER18> I think we will eventually see VideoHub or something along those lines with a similar hosting platform from the PornHub company, just for non-porn.

<comment><USER19> They may try it--they have the expertise, and the infrastructure--but I think they will try to separate the brands, and I doubt they will be able to do better than vimeo.

<comment><USER20> >They'll try to separate the brands

I'm pretty sure they will, and they already have a lot of experience doing that.

It's incredible how many people in this topic mention "PornHub", but not "MindGeek". They could just start yet another video streaming site and probably most people wouldn't know that it's using the same technology as the top porn sites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I would think the interface/front-end would be the most obvious and important way to catch the attention of visitors when competing against any decent-sized online company; I have never heard of livevideo.com, but at very first glance, I am certain it was never a threat on google/youtube's radar even if you had the best backend system in the world.

No offense, but it looks like a 1990s yahoo.com version of youtube, and that introductory how-to video is already way more than enough to lose the attention of the majority viewers. A search engine landing page with more words/distractions from the search bar than google.com has (even a fraction of a second longer than what people expect) is already a red flag. Similarly, a streaming site must have extremely uniform, visually stimulating, well defined and relatable content for any hope of keeping visitors interested at a fraction of the rate youtube does. Consider how even the cheapest of porn websites (an industry with tens of millions of competing and ever-improving video streaming websites) know to float uniform rows of well tested, clickable video thumbnails as the first thing one sees, along with any and all instructions/options compressed onto a single dropdown button in the top corner— sometimes they don't even show the title unless you hover over it.

My point is you have to figure out a way to make it even more accessible to new visitors than google is to their non-new visitors; and the amount of front-end text, options, and non-uniform content on livevideo.com is several leagues behind where it would need to start to consider a plan of attack... even against YT or the googs 10 years ago, circa 2009

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure which 2006-2008 you lived through, but this was pretty standard web design back then. YouTube from 2007: [https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/timeline/youtube-2007](https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/timeline/youtube-2007)

Had the company been allowed to exist and compete fairly, it would have evolved into something more modern and mobile friendly. Judging a startup from before the pre-mobile era, and blaming the design for its failure is kind of silly.

This was the norm back then, if I were creating a video sharing website in 2019 of course I'd approach it differently, but alas there's no point in even trying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > I should be a multimillionaire ... we should have been what ... a major > competitor of YouTube and we should be a multibillion dollar Unicorn Tech > Company. And the only reason we're not is because of anti competitive > behavior from Google

Hmm ok. Are you _sure_ that was the only reason?

All those organic links from those 74 million of websites do not disappear even if you do disappear from the search results.

The mention that google executives contacted them to discuss the $3,000 a month he could of made if he ran google ads - that is genuinely peanuts. This makes me think that was a really small operation that didn't have a hope in hell in going big and competing with vimeo or dailymotion, let alone google. For comparison I was running an AdSense site around the same time and was easily clearing £800-1000 (approx $1500 I guess) a month with only about 150,000-200,000 visits/month (CPMs were higher in those days - I get about the same traffic now but only about £150-300 a month now)

If you these google "executives" (p.s. these wont have been "executives" wasting their time on a tiny publisher like this, you'd be lucky to even get a call from an actual google employee at that size - any tiny publisher deals like this would be farmed out to third party "partner" companies... the real _actual_ executives would be talking to the New York Timess/Conde nasts/ESPNs of the world where the serious money is worth their time) are suggesting you could get up to $3,000 a month then sorry you were never destined for the big time.

Sounds like those 74 million (74,000,000 sites linking to you - that is _loads_ ) sites sending traffic your way were actually only sending in a trickle of users otherwise you'd be able to sell a lot of advertising. Even if each site only sent a single measly user per month, 74,000,000 visitors a month is a chunky visitor base and would easily net you more than $3,000 - even with a CPM of 25c ("good" publishers can expect rates well in excess of this - easily $1 and perhaps $3,4 or even 5 for really top-tier stuff) you'd be looking at about $18,500 a month. You'd easily be able to do direct deals with advertisers and get better CPMs at that sort of level.

Start ups fail all the time. It is hard and it is sad but I don't like it when people don't accept responsibility for their own failures though. This attitude of "it was everyone's fault apart from mine!" annoys me a lot

<comment><AUTHOR> You're confusing stats from my other company with LiveVideo. Those numbers are from my second startup that Google messed with. It was a much smaller operation nowhere near the size of LiveVideo.com. The amount of traffic I did in a year with my startup was a weekend for LiveVideo.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> >> You know, I should be a multimillionaire right now like we should have been what YouTube is today or at least a major competitor of YouTube and we should be a multibillion dollar Unicorn Tech Company.

I find this statement extremely arrogant. It incorrectly assumes that the value and quality of a product is correlated with the financial success of the product. It hasn't been the case for decades. To everyone outside of the elite 'I used to go to MIT and was an early employee of MySpace' crowd, this was always the case and it's not news at all.

When I build a product, I assume that there is a 90% to 99% probability that it's going to fail and I know exactly why it's going to fail and it will have nothing to do with product quality or strategy. I just assume that I'll have to build many exceptional products to even get a shot at making a living out of one of them. I expect success to be completely random and inexplicable.

There are many superior products and technologies around but nobody talks about them and they are not being built upon. Everyone only talks about the mediocre tech that comes out of Google, Facebook, Amazon, or the elite Silicon Valley VC startup funnel.

I enjoy reading these kinds of articles about elites getting a dose of the highly centralized monopolistic reality that they and their friends helped to create (e.g. especially those about Foursquare founders whining about Google over and over) - They're getting a taste of their own poison IMO. And yes, if you used to go to MIT, Stanford or Harvard or were on the founding team of MySpace, you are part of the elite; you have no excuse to complain, you are in the 'in crowd'; you could just have called the right people to make your problems go away; you failed to do that. Most people don't even have the option to socially network their problems away.

But by all means keep whining; at least when elites whine, maybe other elites and politicians are more likely to listen.

</comment><comment><USER24> Is there a non ranty description of what happened ?

I read the first couple of paragraphs and between the rantings how he should be a multimillionaire and how Google will destroy all of his projects, I gave up.

It is obviously a very emotional subject for Trent, but that's just not the best way to present what happened to a third party.

<comment><USER25> Summary of claims from the interview:

Live Video was a more successful video platform in the mid 2000s until Google bought YouTube and leveraged their monopoly on search and ads to cut off traffic to Live Video. They also paid content creators to leave Live Video and sign exclusive contracts with the cash Google injected to the company. The only reason Justin TV survived is that they pivoted to gaming to avoid competing with YouTube.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The words "I should be a millionaire" sure appears a lot. The subject suggests there's a different title, but it really seems like the real subject is how this person isn't a millionaire.

</comment><comment><USER27> I had a LiveVideo account. I had made a (terrible) music video made from clips of my driving around and sped up. I put it on my YouTube, but they ended up over-compressing the video so it was all blurry. (Fast-moving clips don't compress very well.)

At the time, some fairly medium-to-high prominence YouTubers (back when Peter Oakley/Geriatric1927 was the most popular channel) had moved to LiveVideo so I tried uploading my video there. They didn't re-compress it all and it was still high quality.

Time passed, and YouTube changed their rules to not compress so much. I re- uploaded my video (having to make a small change to avoid the hash collision) and it stayed up.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg2gjrUFx9c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg2gjrUFx9c)

</comment><comment><USER28> The product had no USP. And it was a suckier product. That's it.

It is not possible to compete with Google using Google-like business model. It is already being used by Google and Google is very good at it.

Who manages to compete with Google using a slightly different business model? Facebook. Why? Different USP. Different product.

Who else? Amazon. Why? Different USP, different product.

Who else? Pornhub. Why? Different USP, different product.

List goes on.

</comment><comment><USER29> I mean Twitch succeeded so that's a counterpoint. Vimeo is still going.. If I were to start a video company today, I'd go mobile first.

<comment><USER24> Dailymotion is still there as well (although I find their product really inferior to the competitors)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I wonder if a standard library or service could be written that detects search engine manipulation, in order to provide a mathematical confidence that it occurred of some kind.

So for example, you make metube.com and it shows up on all the search engines. Off the top of my head, maybe it watches the rank over time, kind of like a stock ticker. If Google detects metube.com and buries your listing, but the listing stays the same on more egalitarian search engines like duckduckgo.com, that would show as a divergence in the historical rankings.

So you could get answers like "there's a 77% likelihood that Google buried your link" or "Google's result diverges 23% from other search engines" or something like that.

Then an overall measure of the top million sites or whatever could be used to generate an overall fairness/bias rating.

If it showed enough manipulation over a long enough time, maybe that would be grounds to regulate or break up the largest search engines. Or maybe the law wouldn't be necessary, because a browser plugin could say "there's a 95% chance that this search result has not been manipulated" or even request results with a high degree of manipulation as a way of finding the canonical truth.

Hmmm that gives me an idea for a search engine...

<comment><USER31> Might have been possible back in the day, but now the search engine market is just Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo's upcoming crawler (their own bot indexes my website but I'm not certain if it's being used for results). Even Yahoo uses bing for results:

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8174763.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8174763.stm)

[https://techcrunch.com/2015/04/16/microsoft-and-yahoo- renew-...](https://techcrunch.com/2015/04/16/microsoft-and-yahoo-renew-search- allian/)

You would need to go to the country-specific search engines like Yandex and Baidu, which may not be that great for english or US-based content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> My thoughts on this:

Did Livevideo offer anything new or different to what Youtube already had? Was it better than Youtube in any way?

We shouldn't forget Google couldn't compete with Youtube either. Google had to buy Youtube because Googlevideo was not as good.

Twitch found a way to compete just fine.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. It had live video, and live streaming in 2007 that is better than what YouTube even offers today. LiveVideo.com had way more features than YouTube even has today.

Justin.tv which eventually became Twitch actually struggled and almost failed before they were able to capture the live streaming gaming market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> 57 matches for "You know" in that transcript. I got about half way through but can't finish this, it's so annoying!

</comment><comment><USER34> And he posted his video to YouTube. The irony.

</comment><comment><USER35> Hi, I was really screwed by Tech Giant Companies many times in my life for a big money. But now, here I am reborn to bring justice. I reported 1 case to the European Commission and cases like mine led to a new law which was introduced last month:

"Get up, stand up, don't give up the fight!"

[https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...](https://eur- lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32019R1150&from=EN)

<comment><USER35> If somebody is too lazy too read. Search providers have to publish their search algorithm inside European union within one year from the date of publication

<comment><USER36> Sounds like a bold claim .. and yes it is. Only the "main parameters" must be published.

From your source ( _emphasis mine_ ):

> Providers of [..] online search engines _should not be required_ to disclose > the detailed functioning of their ranking mechanisms, _including algorithms_ > , under this Regulation. [..]

> A general description of the main ranking parameters should safeguard > [against bad faith manipulation of ranking by third parties]

Main parameters being defined as:

> The notion of main parameter should be understood to refer to any general > criteria, processes, specific signals incorporated into algorithms or other > adjustment or demotion mechanisms used in connection with the ranking.

<comment><USER35> It's the first step. If everybody will report criminal behavior( if seen ) of some of Tech Giants, then we can move this mountain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> >Compete with youtube

I admire the spirit. It's right up there with lets see who we can attack....hmm...US military...yeah they seem about the right size as a worthy opponent.

</comment><comment><USER38> Thanks for posting this! The screenshots of the platform look awesome.

</comment><comment><USER39> The article is 90% delusional

<comment><USER33> It feels like it's 90% "you know,"

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I am not sure if the stories are accurate, but if they are this is exactly the kind of anti-trust activity that Microsoft was prosecuted for (under US law). This is extending market power (monopoly) from one area to another (search and ads to video streaming). I know it looks like some of the startups broke some 'rules' like porn or pedophilia, but really YouTube breaks the same rules and uses the same (flagging/review) technique used in some of the startups. It's hard to start anything web related without a good Google index. Google has 93% market share in search [[http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market- share](http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share)]

</comment><comment><USER41> > (...) is just like, I don't know, like maybe half of the features (...)

Some editing would be great to readability.

</comment><comment><USER42> "And the only reason we're not is because of anti competitive behavior from Google."

I closed at this point.

I'm no fan of Google, but if your business fails, I expect there to be some self-reflection.

</comment><comment><USER43> Is there a link to the audio download somewhere?

I can't see it, but Id like to listen to this instead of reading it

<comment><USER44> [https://overcast.fm/+SJPJ9ok9U](https://overcast.fm/+SJPJ9ok9U)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Is there an article? I just see videos (and a transcript of a video), and when I click on "Read" in the top right corner, lots of other articles appear?

</comment><comment><USER46> you didn't try to compete against Youtube and Google, you had an early vision of Periscope and House Party. Do you still have access to MySpace guys?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not really.

I could maybe track down Toan, I still check in with his brother occasionally. But Brad is in the wind, tried to track him down but it seems he doesn't want to be found.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Wow... what a ton of BS. I disagree with most of it.

\- "Google/YouTube made an anti-competitive move against LiveVideo". Ok, on the face of it (if you believe everything Lapinsky says) then it is really bad, as in "illegal" kind of bad. It makes me wonder how Google/Youtube avoided being sued. I whole heartily condemn YouTube/Google _IF_ they did this. It sounds plausible btw, since they have done jerk things to Yelp or flight search engines, etc...

\- "There is child porn on YouTube". Really? I don't believe it. They do a very good job with regular porn. I have never seen a pair of boobs on YouTube over the years. I don't know how they do it, but it seems to me that moderation of "nakedness" probably using AI works pretty damn well. I have never seen an article about porn issues on YouTube.

\- "Google is no longer a neutral digital intermediate because they promote fairness". Yes. They do. And if they were not doing it, governments around the world would force them to do it. Also their advertisers do not want to be associated with the likes of Alex Jones and are putting pressure on YouTube to sort the issue. This is the sad reality, but Google, Facebook and Twitter are forced to moved from a "neutral" digital platform to something more akin to a "publisher". People on the board of Google are no more elected that the directors of publication of the largest newspapers. And if you think that shows an anti-conservatice bias, look at who is President of the US, who is going to be Prime Minister in the UK, etc... I don't think this is going to be easy but Google (and social media) to find a right balance where most people are able to publish, but the most fringe/toxic members of the community deserved to be demonetized. Will Google abuse its powers of f//k up from time to time? Sure they will. But I agree with the overall trend. And again, they do not have a choice.

\- "Google changed its search engine to promote sites with responsive designs". I absolutely agree with the change. Most people use mobile devices. You waited until 2013 to realize you _had_ to do that? A website that is not responsive today and back in 2013 probably sucked anyway, and it is "right" for Google to demote them. There is nothing anti-competitive about that. Btw, I can predict the future too. For instance, at some point Google will promote sites that support HTTP/2 and not just HTTP/1.1, so maybe you think of doing that on your next "Wordpress business".

\- "Google wanted ads on my website". Just say "no". And I don't believe in the logical fallacy that _because_ you refused that is why the website was delisted. Seriously dude, your website was _way to small_ for Google to care that much.

\- The business was overly dependent on Google search results. Google tweak its algorithm from time to time. Most of the time Google has genuine reasons for the changes. Sometimes they want to demote a "large" competitor in an anti-competitive move (which btw, I think it's going to get harder and harder for Google to get away with that). But your tiny site that depends on search results... it's just an unintended consequence. Google does _not_ care about you. And if you get most of your sales from Google, your business model is highly volatile and can disappear overnight. I don't want Google to stop making tweaks to improve the quality of results and destroy dark SEO hacks, just because occasionally they happen to accidentally destroys someones under- diversified business model. I am sure it sucks to be on the receiving end of this, but imagine a world where Google _never_ tweaked the algorithm. Search results would be utterly worthless today.

</comment><comment><USER48> I don't think that even if Google avoided the tactics they used, you still could not compete with YouTube. Alphabet has as one of its goals cultural "guidance". This is openly advocated by Eric Schmidt in his book 'A New Digital Age.' They ran YouTube at a gigantic ongoing loss for over a decade solely to suppress competition and establish themselves as the only viable video platform. If you can build a billion-dollar infrastructure, and after those bills are paid you can lose hundreds of millions of dollars a year running it, than and only then can you compete with YouTube and face these tactics in addition to all of the legal and political pressure Google can produce. They haven't even needed to break out political pressure (and by that I mean getting government to establish regulations and legislation that YouTube is omitted from by being grandfathered in, not any kind of 'conservative/liberal bias' sort of thing) yet. And so long as Alphabet is profitable, we may never see those tactics as they're simply not needed.

YouTube is a key factor in Alphabet exercising the cultural 'guidance' that Eric Schmidt argues is not only Googles responsibility but moral obligation. For people who agree with Schmidt and disagree with the position that the public should be permitted to decide their own future, good or bad, it will be impossible to gain their support. Make no mistake, that viewpoint is the one that has supported every monarchy, dictatorship, theocracy, and non-democratic social structure throughout history. Political scientists call is Conservatism with a capital C, whereas the view that the public should play a role in their own governance and decide their own fate, for good or ill, is the alternative that drove the American Revolution, French Revolution, and countless blood- soaked revolutions across the globe. It won every single one of those wars. But it, too, lost to Google.

Just consider, if 70+% of the public today believed that interracial marriage was offensive and disgusting, which was true when interracial marriage was legalized by the Supreme Court in the 1960s, Google would deplatform anyone who agreed with the legalization of interracial marriage in order to defend that status quo. They do not seek to provide an open, global platform that can host or play a part in public debate about serious issues. They seek to exercise cultural guidance as Eric Schmidt sees fit. It has been the public which has reliably improved over time and progressed while still containing contingents of nuts and extremists. And it has progressed not despite that, but because of it. No closed and centrally managed society in history has become more progressive except through dreadfully bloody revolutions that destroyed its management.

</comment><comment><USER49> Yes, you know, I know.

Maybe do some filtering on the autotranscripts? Interesting read otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER50> Google is Tier 1, they don't pay bandwidth. no one can compete with them

</comment><comment><USER51> Im glad to see more of this. You can learn a lot more from failures which arent discussed well online.

</comment><comment><USER52> Very good article. Yes, Google is indeed a very strong competitor for startups.

</comment><comment><USER53> The only company competing successfully with google is facebook, and they are both giant ad factories that will violate your privacy without batting an eye. Wondering if there is a ceiling in how much revenue an ad company can make using reasonable methods to generate revenue, and there just is no other way but by pushing crap to our browsers.

So to compete and beat facebook and google one has to be good at the ad game not just the content game.

Whoever thought google will allow a competitor to use google's own platform to grow and threaten their own video ad stream should probs not be in a company's board for a while.

</comment><comment><USER54> Wow! Google needs to be broken up.</comment>


Everything Is Going Deep: 'The Age of Surveillance Capitalism' - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/29/opinion/artificial-intelligence-surveillance.html <comment><USER3> I'm most worried about the rise of Fintech apps enabled by APIs like Plaid. The media seems more worried about 10-year old Facebook likes being sold than a perpetual real time feed of bank transaction data ending up in the wrong hands or in the hands of a nefarious developer.

For the record, I'm highly critical of Plaid and hope the tech media catches on soon. They do not require developers to communicate which permissions they are asking for when onboarding new customers (I don't even think that is an option even if developers wanted to) and there's no central UI for a end customer to review permissions you've granted across developers and revoke them. I don't think they have any requirements to encrypt this data on the developer side and have no idea how they audit developers to make sure they are using various endpoints without violation of their developer terms.

<comment><USER4> > a perpetual real time feed of bank transaction data.

Jeez that does sound terrifying. I mean I guess that's already here in my credit cards databases, but at least (in the USA) I have some legal protections.

<comment><USER5> Like what? Dollars to doughnuts, Facebook already has your purchase data from your card company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Shoshana Zuboff is one of those people that make me upset when I discover them. Why didn't I hear about them and their books books much earlier? Is it only because she is not marketing her books well enough?

The Age of the Smart Machine (1988) is truly visionary and well written.

edit:

I'm currently reading The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.

The book has well developed concepts like 'behavioral surplus and 'instrumentarianism'. There are also clever terms like 'radical indifference', 'observation without witness', 'equivalence without equality'. They are just plain insightful. I can instantly recognize them as something I could not conceptualize before.

<comment><USER7> This kind of books go through different channels than the ones that are followed by the engineers. Engineers pick up this stuff when it ends up in the mainstream but they don't really participate that much in the tech critique world.

<comment><USER8> somewhat unfortunate vicious cycle it seems like, engineers either don't consider the ramifications of what they build or are willing to handwave it away, until it all starts to come back around

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I manage a deep learning team but I have some reservations about the technology. IMO deep learning is best for optimizing back end systems and not good for systems that 'touch' people: deciding to loan money, automated sentencing of criminals, targeted marketing from personal information, etc.

For me, the problems are lack of explainability and possible bias.

There are many great applications for deep learning and AI in general but some guard rails must be in place for public good.

<comment><USER10> Being able to shrug and say "the algorithm did it," is almost certainly seen as a killer feature for any authoritarian, soulless megacorp and others. Instead of having to take responsibility for decisions, they just point at the box they programmed to act a certain way, and blame it. Unless a lot more people understand GIGO, this is going to stick around.

<comment><USER11> Exactly, this is easily one of the scariest things to see happening. Examples like Google's recommendation algorithm pushing people towards more and more extreme content (or even bot created content) signals to me that we're headed down a very dark road.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> IMHO, "deep" is just the new "smart". People are just doing the same thing they were doing but bigger and better, but when you are building a new company you need to use the adjective of the times.

We have had "smart"-everything, it already sounds tired, hence "deep"—everything, let's see how long it lasts..

</comment><comment><USER13> I've recently realized how trivial is to detect suspicious activities on real- time video feeds just by tracking human poses, and how this is an almost completely solved problem now (basically it can count on incremental improvement of accuracy of models that are used inside). I have doubts this would in any way "democratize AI", but instead might end up as a powerful weapon of oppression. No wonder most of the papers on this topic originate from China.

<comment><USER14> Walk without rythm and it won't attract the surveillance state

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > "That's why the adjective that so many people are affixing to all of these > new capabilities to convey their awesome power is "deep.""

One of the best pieces of academic marketing was calling this set of techniques "deep" learning. The word is so rich with connotations, it immediately brings to mind all the synonyms: profound, complex, arcane, etc. It makes people ascribe _far_ more complexity to the system than it actually has.

When in reality, it's just a "massively multi-layered and multi-stage" network. But that doesn't sound nearly as profound, and doesn't allow journalists to spin wild tales.

<comment><USER16> People will nearly always opt for the language that conveys the most meaning, even if doing so outstrips the underlying phenomena being named, since the point of language is to convey meaning

<comment><USER15> That doesn't mean the meaning has to be precise or truthful. Poetry, metaphors, marketing, implication, white lies - they all rely on meaning being multifaceted, and bringing things to mind without actually saying them explicitly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you don't live in China, you can start by not carrying a smartphone around all the time and disabling javascript. Just saying...

<comment><USER18> At least use the NoScript plugin and opt-in to only the JS you need.

<comment><USER19> I ditched NoScript when I realised that it wasn't blocking inline JS. I landed on uBlock with Advanced Mode, which allows quick toggling of inline, 1st-3rd party and a few other things. uMatrix deserves an honourable mention also; it's been illuminating to see the sheer scale of trackers that are loaded on certain pages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if it's time for software engineers to form our own union or guild to combat misusing our profession in corrupt and immoral ways. We would have immense power as a group, but on our own we're all beholden to our employers which makes us complicit in doing work without thought to the long term societal damage we do.

</comment><comment><USER21> Deep Learning could in fact enable the next Deep State. Not that I love repurposing madness of today.

<comment><USER22> What does "the next Deep State" even mean? What do the words "deep state" even mean in this context?

<comment><USER6> It means state within a state. Origin of the term is in 1990s Turkey. Military, police and justice system were upholding national interests and acting independently from the government.

Deep State is a form of clandestine government made up of hidden or covert networks of power operating independently of a nation's political leadership, in pursuit of their own agenda and goals.

<comment><USER23> _upholding national interests_

'national interest' seems like a highly moveable feast.

<comment><USER24> Not particularly. As they were in control of the state, their goals were considered the national interest. It may not have reflected the will of the population or government, but that's often the case with national interests.

<comment><USER23> That seems like a really bad definition.

<comment><USER24> The concept of "national interests" has been in use for about five hundred years now. What issue do you have with it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I posed the following to @Dang a few days ago with respect to what one would possibly think is, at minimum, as responsibility of YC (and the greater VC/SV population) to acknowledge -- though I don't see this happening any time soon:

\----

 __ _[How can we]_ __Find a way to have a serious objective talk with the greater community on the extraordinarily global reaching issues of the impact of Silicon Valley on society, community, culture as a whole.

Look at what we have to just emerge in the last 1.5 decades alone from "unicorns" in silicon valley:

* ___US policy seemingly being set /disrupted via twitter_ __

* __ _Mental health studies coming out on the negative impact of Facebook_ __

* __ _Election manipulation through ad-powered platforms such as Google and FB_ __

* __ _Massive cultural dialogue and political revolutions being fueled through twitter_ __

* __ _Assassinations being corroborated through Apple an watch_ __

* __ _Global spying and surveillance conducted through all our connected technology_ __

Just to name a few of the globally impactful issues of our day which directly stem from the efforts of Silicon Valley in specific and the tech industry in general.

As the preeminent VC company in the minds of any young entrepreneur who wants to build the Next Big Thing, I would pose that YC actually has a social responsibility to, at a minimum, foster a conversation on these issues in a meaningful, serious and deep manner.

What are the consequences of MASSIVE success of a company?

\----

</comment><comment><USER26> The article makes me wonder if the author is aware of the technical meaning of "deep" in the context of the term "deep learning." Not that I disagree with the article, these things tend to take on a life of their own and that's just how it goes with language and culture.. but at least in the case of machine learning "deep" is not just an arbitrary terminology to sound fancy, but refers to a series of breakthroughs allowing incredible training performance on multi-layered neural networks; where "deep" specifically contrasts these results with prior state of the art in 3-layered networks. And presumably this use of the term is at the source of several of these other "hyped" uses of it, perhaps with the exception of "deep state", so it's frustrating to see it thrown into the same basket.

<comment><USER27> The word "deep" came way before deep learning, and can mean different things in different contexts

<comment><USER26> But one of the contexts provided in the article is "deep learning", that is what I am responding to. My point being that he lumps "deep" in as a hyped up term, trying to make connections across "different things in different contexts" as you say, ignoring the fact that it has a technical meaning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The term 'surveillance capitalism' has become rather misleading, especially since Snowden pretty much showed the whole thing wasn't either all about terrorism or capitalism but control. It is forgetting about the relationship between big tech and the state, which today sometimes mean the same thing.

<comment><USER8> capitalism IS control, at the most basic level control of private property ensured by the state

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> You can start by not carrying your smartphone around with you and turning off javascript.

<comment><USER23> That's just swapping one set of disadvantages for another.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The Intercept has published an interview with the author, and I found it to be compelling enough to immediately start reading the book.

> You're not technically the product, she explains over the course of several > hundred tense pages, because you're something even more degrading: an input > for the real product, predictions about your future sold to the highest > bidder so that this future can be altered.

> it's clear that surveillance capitalists have discovered that the most > predictive sources of data are when they come in and intervene in our lives, > in our real-time actions, to shape our action in a certain direction that > aligns with the kind of outcomes they want to guarantee to their customers.

[https://theintercept.com/2019/02/02/shoshana-zuboff-age- of-s...](https://theintercept.com/2019/02/02/shoshana-zuboff-age-of- surveillance-capitalism/)

</comment><comment><USER30> if surveillance capitalism was so successful, you would expect the overall ad spending to have spiked recently , since people claim to have found the holy grail that turns ads directly into profits. But it hasn't.

<comment><USER31> And they can sell information to your insurance company etc. It doesn't have to be only about targetting you with ads. Information about you can be valuable in other ways.

<comment><USER32> And it doesn't even have to be useful to the companies although it certainly helps. They just need to /think/ it is useful to sell it. Theranos raked in lots of money before it was revealed to be a lie.

Capitalism and values are fundamentally a means of resource allocation - <USER2> everyone is wrong about what really matters that means it is valued even if its true utility is nill or negative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Now I want to eat a deep dish pizza to not think about this.</comment>


Custom Sony Malware Indicates Previous Knowledge of Sony Networks - <AUTHOR> https://www.bluecoat.com/security-blog/2014-12-04/custom-sony-malware-indicates-previous-knowledge

<comment><USER2> I wonder for how long were these guys inside Sony's network. This analysis may indicate weeks or months, as it does the fact that the attackers extracted terabytes of information without anyone noticing.

</comment><comment><USER3> It isnt clear from the article, but how did Blue Coat get the sample? Is Sony their client and their product missed this malware and this is the postmortem?

</comment><comment><USER4> OT but: "The site is using outdated security settings that may prevent future versions of Chrome from being able to safely access it"

<comment><USER5> That's because Chrome is phasing out SSL certificates issued using the outdated SHA-1, starting with the minor warning (the yellow triangle) for certificates with expiration date on or after Jan/2017\. In this case, the certificate expires on 3/2018.

Ironically, Blue Coat is a security company [2].

[1] [http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2014/09/gradually-s...](http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2014/09/gradually- sunsetting-sha-1.html)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Coat_Systems](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Coat_Systems)</comment></comment>


Bribery vs. Quid Pro Quo: What's the Difference? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/discourse/bribery-vs-quid-pro-quo-whats-the-difference-81151981ae38 <comment><USER2> Depends on the social norm IMO.</comment>


Theories on Why College Kids Are Studying Less - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/8-Theories-on-Why-College-Kids-Are-Studying-Less-4235

<comment><USER2> NONE of those theories are the reason. And frankly, I find it worrisome none of these guys can even come close. Studying methods becoming more efficient? C'mon, dude.

There's a great scene in the movie Orange County (Colin Hanks, Jack Black, others) where the main character, a high school senior, is arguing with his mother, who's worried about the prospect of him leaving home. Shaun: "But I have to go to college." His mother: "Why?!" Shaun: "BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT YOU DO AFTER HIGH SCHOOL."

These days, most of us are not going to college to learn anything. We're going because that's what you do after high school.

<comment><USER3> Backed up by this data:[1]

                     1960        1981
      HS Grads       41.0%       69.7%
      <4 College     16.5%       32.1%
      >=4 College     7.7%       17.1%

(all numbers are cumulative (college-bound are also HS grads), and for people 25+ years old from the entire population)

A higher percentage _graduated_ college in 1981 than _entered_ college in 1960. A person was _twice_ as likely to enter college.

Meanwhile, in 2009, we had:[2]

      HS Grads          86.7%
      Some College      55.6%
      Associates+       38.5%
      Higher degrees    29.5%

(I separated Associates, as I believe those are often <4 years, but just to include it. Same data set & methods.)

Not directly comparable, I'll grant you. But the trend continues. Assuming Bachelors+ == 4 years or more, nearly as many people had 4 years or more as entered college in 1981. And look: the college-entry rate has nearly doubled again. Even with grade inflation, I'd say things are improving overall, despite (because of?) the lowered hours.

[1]: [http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/education/p20-390/t...](http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/education/p20-390/tab-11.pdf) (contains more years + more data)

[2]: [http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/education/cps20...](http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/education/cps2009.html) ("both sexes" excel link)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't know if it's true for others but I could have skipped high school and college and I would have missed absolutely nothing in terms of knowledge acquired during those years. I don't think my sentiments deviate too much from the norm. Knowledge these days is much more decentralized and more readily available and if you want to learn something then you don't really need a classroom or a professor to do it. My suspicion is that more and more students are actually pursuing their real passions simply because it is more accessible and consequently they are spending less time on boring class material but are just going through the motions to get a piece of paper.

<comment><USER5> What I really gained from high school was not so much learning what I wanted to learn, but learning a bunch of things that I, a priori, _didn't_ want to learn.

I was a math and science geek as a kid, and given the choice I would have studied only that in high school. Fortunately for me I wasn't given that choice and was also made to study stuff like literature, which has greatly enriched my life and widened my horizons. High school wasn't (and shouldn't be) so much about learning you favorite subject as opening your eyes to other areas of knowledge outside your passion, so that when you do choose your specialization you do so with a better knowledge as to what is out there.

<comment><USER4> I am a math person as well but my love of literature and social sciences in general is not because I was forced to learn about them in high school or college. In fact I started to enjoy literature, psychology, philosophy and social science when I was left to my own devices and wasn't forced to write a paper right after I had finished reading something. The pace in science courses was almost always to slow and the pace in social science classes was almost always too fast. Universities were designed as cookie cutters and they are now starting to see the effects of that model.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Many of these theories fall back to one root cause--universities can't scale to meet the demand for university education. Consider: adjust faculty are the result of a supply/demand mismatch between Ph.D's and professorships; competition for tenure (or even adjunct positions) makes course evaluations more important to game, and thus grade inflation and smaller assignments became the expectation; this same competition makes it even more important to publish; undergraduate enrollment has outpaced scholarship availability requiring more students to work. This covers four out of eight causes (even five, if you consider "grades becoming less important than activities" to be a consequence of grade inflation).

</comment><comment><USER7> Did these studies ever show a decline in grades?

If grades stayed (relatively) the same, or even _increased_ , then the lack of studying shouldn't be a problem. Either kids are smarter, or the _courses_ aren't forcing them to study as much. In this latter case, it is the professors to blame, not the kids.

Granted, all these only come out if the grades did not decline significantly.

<comment><USER8> This is confounded somewhat by the problem of grade inflation.

I suppose another way to measure would be figuring out if we're getting more useful graduates but I can't think of how to measure that (apart from perhaps average increase in wages).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Slightly off-topic, but...

 _The University of California study finds that the average student at a four- year college in 1961 studied about 24 hours a week. Today's average student hits the books for just 14 hours._

As I was nearing the end of high school, everyone was telling me that in college, I would probably have to do two hours of studying for every one hour of class. 12 hours of class (one for each two of the 24 hours spent studying) seems like an unusually light course load to me (and it was the minimum for maintaining full-time status), so I'm inclined to doubt that that ratio was the norm then. Where did this two-per-one norm come from?

<comment><USER10> You can do that if you want straight As!

<comment><USER3> You can do that if you want an aneurysm!

<http://thereifixedit.com/>

edit: disclaimer: I had a 21 credit semester. Not recommended.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I honestly think students study less because we can get away with it. We can study less get a little above average on tests and with grading on a curve you can get a decent grade.

Add to that a lot of students have a lot of fun alternatives to do with that extra time, ie party, hang out with friends, try to get girls, pursue other hobbies and passions.

</comment><comment><USER12> Because they're lazy and they've been given everything on a silver platter. I'm 24.

</comment><comment><USER13> Since when has it been acceptable to use anonymous and pseudonymous comments on another site as the primary basis of an article published by a major magazine?

</comment><comment><USER14> Traditionally education system has been creating employees. Time to change that to create _employers._

</comment><comment><USER15> College is becoming worth more as a credential than as education. This is unfortunate because it means that students will be less discriminating about the quality of their education, causing the quality of education to diminish. Additionally, students will increasingly care more about merely earning the piece of paper and will be encouraged to take any shortcut possible, including cheating, to obtain a degree.

Additionally, young adults (18-25 year olds) are not expected to be as mature as they would have been say 20 or 40 years ago. Many students view college as a burdensome extension of high-school, they see the student-teacher relationship as an inferior/dominant relationship rather than closer to the peer relationship it should be. They see education as something they need to do rather than as an opportunity to enlighten themselves. They are increasingly enthused by the prospect of receiving a shoddy rubber-stamp education rather than appalled that they are receiving so little educational value from their dollars (also partly because perhaps increasingly it isn't _their_ dollars any more). The combination of this and the above is absolutely poisonous to the quality of higher education.

</comment><comment><USER16> There may also be less perceived benefit to studying compared with other activities, such as interacting and collaborating with the broader world. Oh, the horror!</comment>