Facebook Can't Cope with the World It's Created - <AUTHOR> http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/11/07/facebook-cant-cope-with-the-world-its-created/ <comment><USER2> >Facebook can no longer deny its moral responsibility to try to understand how cyberspace, law, and politics collide in each of the countries where it operates, nor its responsibility to do something about it.

That sentence doesn't make sense. Do something about what? How those things collide? It's very unclear what the author thinks Facebook is supposed to do, or what he thinks Facebook is actually responsible for. Is this a call to regulate posts so there's no fake news, or more, to prevent all speech that can incite bad actions? In perilous regions of the world, sometimes people are arrested for their posts, and can be seen to be connected with others on Facebook, so that they also fall under suspicion. Is Facebook supposed to keep those users safe somehow? I mean, what's the author's gripe?

A better article would have mentioned that free speech, a "good thing," albeit sometimes dangerous, is powerfully fostered by Facebook. Give it some credit. It would also have been fairer if it had mentioned how difficult it is to detect and thwart bad actors who find ways to abuse any platform. (Removing trolls from small forums is hard enough.) Instead, it insinuates that Facebook is willfully indifferent. At least it isn't accused of colluding with the bad actors, as sometimes happens when US companies do business overseas.

<comment><USER3> Yes, it is interesting that the author sees no place in the modern world for the kind of free speech enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. They are happy with a giant global monopolist controlling all speech, as long as they use that power to enforce their political agenda.

That is an incredibly dangerous mindset and one that seems to be becoming more pervasive in respectable circles.

<comment><USER4> The Constitutional guarantee of free speech mandates the behavior of the _government_ to not interfere with the rights of _private actors_. When a private actor (such as Facebook) chooses to publish or suppress content from a third party, that is a _voluntary exercise of Constitutionally protected speech_.

Social media services have neither a moral nor legal obligation to publish hate speech.

<comment><USER3> Correct. But private corporations can choose whether or not to follow in the path of liberal democracy or authoritarianism in how they relate to their customers.

Facebook has more customers than any country has citizens so this question is of great importance to how their service continues to grow and impact the world.

<comment><USER5> > can choose whether or not to follow in the path of liberal democracy or > authoritarianism

Liberal Democracy can also be authoritarian. The words you're thinking of are libertarian and authoritarian. Liberty as in free, authority as in ruled.

<comment><USER6> Do you not recognize that both words have the same Latin roots? It is only in the US where this illogical distinction is made because the word liberal has been bastardized.

 _" William Safire points out that liberalism is attacked by both the Right and the Left: by the Right for defending such practices as abortion, homosexuality, and atheism, by the Left for defending free enterprise and the rights of the individual over the collective."_

<comment><USER6> It is so annoying to be DV'd without a rebuttal. Please make your case and we can debate the merits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My idea for a quick fix is to remove likes/dislikes/emoji reactions. If people can't see how others feel about a post/article in an instant, they might have to read and decide for themselves how to feel.

<comment><USER8> Upvotes on HN/Reddit do essentially the same thing. I don't have the user statistics, but I'd imagine the typical HN reader only reads a sampling of the top-voted comments, which essentially allows them "to see how others feel about a post/article in an instant."

If you want an example of the opposite approach, you can always look at 2009-era YouTube, when all comments shown were in a strict "newest" order. If you remember, YouTube had a bit of reputation for some of the lowest-quality comment sections anywhere.

There simply is no "quick fix" for clickbait, aside from altering basic human psychology, or some type of (probably complex) regulation.

<comment><USER9> What I've noticed a lot on sites like HN and Reddit is that there's always heavy 'tilting'. If any comment ever drops below +1 (or below that of a different viewpoint, so +10 vs +1), people just blindly start ramming the downvote button without any thought, as if they aren't capable of analyzing the comment on its own merit because 'the crowd' has already decided for them and they take the path of least resistance in terms of mental effort. This is also why 'brigading' is so tremendously effective, you only have to tilt the balance a little bit and the crowd will take care of the rest.

<comment><USER10> I am not sure how true that is. I have had many comments go negative and still end up positive.

I think people are more likely to think about voting when they see a downvoted post.

PS: I also feel some net negative posts are a good sign that someone is not simply voicing the crowd's opinions.

<comment><USER11> I've caught myself before sometimes being more careless with the downvote button if the comment was already grayed out. After I realized this risk, I now attempt to be more mindful.

So it is a thing that happens, at least to a certain extent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Facebook has to be broken down to pieces. I think it has reached a state where it cannot be allowed to continue as a single company being able to observe/monitor public and private communication / social interaction of so many people and not being regulated and controlled by the government.

<comment><USER13> Would you apply the same logic to government?

Government has to be broken down to pieces. I think it has reached a state where it cannot be allowed to continue as a single government being able to observe/monitor public and private communication / social interaction of so many people and not being regulated and controlled by market forces.

<comment><USER14> Aside from the federal/state/local split, which has already been mentioned, the Constitution split Executive/Legislative/Judicial branches out at the federal level. We may have weakened the intent of those checks and balances in our current environment, but they certainly were designed into the system.

So yes, to answer your question - I would definitely would apply the same logic to government.

<comment><USER15> Going along on that idea, in what part should Facebook be broken down into ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have no love for Facebook, but it's important to recognize that Facebook role in these problems is only incidental. If there was no Facebook, we'd have the same growing fake news, astroturfing and bot problem—these are inherent to social media and widespread internet access. I'm not against regulation of Facebook per se, but the broader question of how we contend with online misinformation and propaganda in an online world is much more important.

<comment><USER17> > Facebook role in these problems is only incidental. If there was no > Facebook, we'd have the same growing fake news, astroturfing and bot problem

You don't know this. A major flaw of Facebook is that the CEO thinks his users are "dumb fucks", and who is hell-bent on growth without checks, who is a morality that does not include personal privacy or seemingly any human emotion for his users who made him rich. He has refused to acknowledge the problems on his platform that led to the issues with fake news today.

Perhaps a different company, run by a different person or group of people, will be less intentionally vile and evil.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think it would be interesting if online personas worked a little bit like video game characters. For instance, in an RPG, no one would believe a character could be equally effective at wielding heavy weapons and casting spells, or other tasks: you generally have to pick one or two key areas of expertise and be "OK at best" when anything else comes along.

Yet somehow, in the world of online discourse, everyone's an equal expert on everything? What are the odds that a person really has good knowledge of both nuclear physics and farming?

If you could only post or upvote things that were considered relevant to a few limited areas of expertise in your profile, we would see a very different online world. Suddenly, seeing an article on the front page on a certain topic might actually mean that it got there due to "likes" from people with relevant experience, and not just whatever random definitely-not-statistically-valid sample of "friends" put it there.

<comment><USER19> That's an interesting idea, but it's also probably one that would be impossible to implement effectively. For example:

1\. Who would determine any given person's area of expertise. This is a difficult and potentially difficult thing to do.

2\. People who are ostensibly experts in a topic, even if they have a lot of experience with it, often have incredibly uninformed opinions. As a simple example, most people I know have a lot of experience with dating/relationships, parenting, and politics, but their knowledge of these topics is based on a bizarre and woefully incomplete combination of old wives'tales, anecdotes, and just-so stories. They fully believe they are experts and often have some paper evidence to back this up. Somethin similar can be said of programmers. There are plenty of people who can write a program that works, but are they experts? To a non-technologist, maybe (and maybe not). To the _grande dame_ or _grand homme_ of a field of programming, probably not. The range of defining an "expert" is huge.

Do you have any ideas to address this?

<comment><USER18> The first issue is how to make sure that people aren't creating 100 profiles each (something that's a real problem on sites today). This is where I expect data breaches to "help"; as it becomes more and more ridiculous that our current identity schemes aren't working, something better can be developed and act as a basis for a unique-by-birth profile that is as anonymous as you need it to be.

Part of the problem of expertise would be solved by the natural upper limit on how much expertise is reasonable for one person to have. No one should be able to claim strong experience in more areas than they could have conceivably spent time learning/practicing. Therefore, if you're going to make your profile claim expertise in something you know nothing about, you'd definitely be wasting your limited opportunity to comment and you wouldn't be able to do that for _everything_. Also, if comments/votes/etc. on something are only permitted for people in related fields, an uninformed person's ramblings might still be drowned out by the only other people commenting.

Determining how to limit a profile is tricky. Some restrictions would be easy, e.g. a 14-year-old can't claim 30 years experience in an industry. Some would be harder, perhaps enabled by webs of trust (e.g. as a side effect of employment, your employer adds credibility to your profile somehow in a particular area of expertise).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's gotta feel bad for the local reporters that are literally risking their lives reporting news in Cambodia, to then have their views go down 80%. Because Facebook decided to experiment and implement the Timeline feature. Facebook is barely even tied to the fate or all that concerned, since it's only 18million users.

<comment><USER21> So do you think that once a service has a certain number of users it should cease all changes?

<comment><USER20> Is it fine to have "Mass Scale socio-political experiments on countries that are a slight socio-political shift from civil war"? That is pretty much what a major foreign third party news distribution platform did, while having very little skin in the game.

Move Fast and Break Stuff, is ethically and morally unsound when the end result is making it easier to silence, jail, and execute the press.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't want to read about how bad the situation is, because I already know.

I want to read about how we are going to find a solution.

<comment><USER12> Unfortunately, there is no solution in our current system. The only solution would be to accept that the western (current) capitalist decadent society is causing wealth and power to concentrate in a very narrow group of chosen people who end up having extreme power over masses of people that make up society today.

The only way is to try to try to regulate this capitalist wet dream and try to break it down to smaller companies with less power to pay off politicians. Legislature will have to change dramatically.

<comment><USER23> >regulate the capitalist wet dream

American culture really comes down to this. The driving force behind our "leaders" is a blind will to dominate and hoard wealth. It feels like we're reaching the point in history where this human instinct is backfiring tremendously.

I have a theory that one way of decentralizing power is to create protocol standards that help us share freely. For example, if the concept of a user was somewhat standardized across social media, social media companies could expose an API for sending cross-platform messages, tagging each other in photos, etc.

As the internet itself became standardized, so must our social media. Hell, what's stopping it from becoming a crowd-funded FOSS network of independent social media platforms? Costs a whole lot less to run a social media website if you're not trying to take over the world!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> 'In Myanmar today, Facebook is the internet'

That can't be good...

<comment><USER25> This is also true for a lot of older people new to the internet. My mother doesn't understand that her laptop can do more than browse Facebook and buy things on Amazon. Her bookmarks are the random pages of her friends. Her primary source of news is fast becoming whatever click bait she sees there.

I tell her not to trust Facebook, I explain how she is their product and they exploit her but she doesn't listen.

<comment><USER26> People with less formal education also equals Facebook and Internet. I had a startup that sold B2B2C products to restaurants. I had to train wiaters and cashiers to use their product on their phone (as the customers would). Most of the times when I asked them to open the internet they would open Facebook app directly. They wouldn't understand "browser" or "chrome" either. When I clicked on the chrome icon for them, they would say "Oh, you mean Google??". And then I had to go on and explain that you could go to the URL field and type an specific address you of a site.

<comment><USER27> B2b2c? Could you explain?

<comment><USER26> A product that is "Business to Business to Consumer".

It was a loyalty program for restaurants. I had to sell to the restaurants (B2B), but the main user was their customers (B2C).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I feel FB is kind of dying anyway. All the trendy/cool/geek people have left FB. Users don't share much stuff anymore. There is this ego fatigue too: people are tired of playing this game of making their life looks cool on FB.

It's no coincidence that FB buy WhatsApp, Instagram, Occulus: they have the metrics and they need to move on to something else.

<comment><USER29> Facebook vectored away from trendy/cool/geek when it stopped requiring an email with .edu. It just took awhile for people to get used to the internet. Old people use it to see photos of their grandkids. It's a bigger and more sustainable user base than young people. Young people turn over. The first person I knew with Facebook is 33 with three children and a mortgage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Facebook itself seems to be quite comfortable with the world it has created; a place where every vulnerable (and even perhaps, not so vulnerable) mind can be influenced by information regardless of factual accuracy!

<comment><USER31> Only directly if you are on Facebook.

I can't really tell if any particular influence floats from FB to me through my friends, most of my friends don't use FB either or their not really the type to care about things Facebook tends to influence.

If you're not one for consumerism in the first place, it's not hard to fight away advertising influence, and if you're not that active politically (although you should be!) then again, FB can't really influence you that much. You could argue that what FB doesn't show you is also a form of influence, but if you weren't on FB at all then that argument wouldn't hold.

I guess the world it's created definitely has affected me though. If it could be argued that political leaders are elected based on influence fostered on social media, I can't avoid being affected by that.

Social conversation is how you spread influence, and that's not really a bad thing in itself. What's clearly not great about Facebook however, is how you can pay for that same influence to be injected into normal social conversation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > For a long time, Silicon Valley espoused a dogma of information neutrality — > claiming, falsely, that search engines and social networks were only > impartial tools.

"Why do you close your eyes?", Sussman asked his teacher.

"So that the room will be empty."

</comment><comment><USER33> As much as I dislike Facebook. We have to stop to tell them they are responsible for anything. It's fully our fault whatever one can say is Facebooks. Everything else is just censorship and just as bad. There is no such thing as responsible censorship. One side will always get pissed and who are we or Facebook to decide what's right.

<comment><USER34> If it's a fully private entity like Facebook, is it truly "censorship" in the derisive sense that we associate with it?

If a user on Facebook posts aggressive and distasteful white identity propaganda which begins alienating other users, do Facebook and its advertisers not have the right to use the platform they created to exclude such content should they desire to do so? Does a fictitious "right to be heard" from a privately-administered entity supersede Facebook's actual right to property and self-determination over that property?

If "censorship" is truly a problem here, only another free-market alternative to Facebook is the correct solution. Gab did it with Twitter. Now, whether or not Gab will ever be as successful as Twitter because of the userbase it curates is an entirely different story. One is not entitled to a specific outcome, and if rejecting racism is what makes big business big, there's not much left that the other side of this debate can complain about.

<comment><USER33> This is exactly censorship. If people want to listen They listen. If not than not. Pretty selecting based on YOUR opinion is and always will be censorship

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm curious how many HN people still use Facebook. The overall sentiment here seems to be to just quit it.

<comment><USER36> Those are people who are vocal about their choices.

Based on what you're reading here, the average HNer uses Fastmail, has no Facebook account, writes code in Rust, exercises a lot, wants a self-driving car and works at or owns a start-up.

While most people reading this site are most likely Java, JS or .Net programmers; work at a large enterprise, use Gmail and Facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Seeing the recent wave of discourse surrounding social media platforms has been interesting.

We had similar problems before them. Tabloids, conspiracy theory subculture, clickbait, etc, are nothing new.

And we had "feed readers" that functioned to aggregate news sources that we subscribed/followed/liked. Which, in theory, should have catered to us in the way that people now label an "echo chamber".

But there are a few differences that stick out to me:

\- More people producing content (back in the day anyone could create a blog or personal site, but the barrier of entry is lowered by social media platforms)

\- These platforms are promoting some content above other content (which goes beyond aggregation)

\- There's more data being collected and the tech to analyze it is increasing (targeting segments is easier)

\- Bots

</comment><comment><USER38> Facebook didn't create that world -- it has always existed. Facebook only exposed some previously underrated features of the human society. It's very naive to expect that it can fix it. A social network (or any other technology) can't fix humans just like telephone or television couldn't. Like any massive technology shift it requires new social education. For instance, be very mindful about what you post and who can read/see it, beware of social bubbles and bots, employ critical thinking. The process of education will take time but eventually new online social norms will be formed and the early adopter problems will fade away.

</comment><comment><USER39> I know this comment might attract a lot of hate, but I will put it here anyway.

The main reason why Facebook is not in China is that Chinese government wishes to regulate Facebook while Facebook (like Google) refuses to obey.

In some ways, Chinese government was right in the judgement that unfiltered and unregulated freedom of speech bring its own problems. And now the Western free world is starting to see these problems and impose regulations.

Disclaimer: I'm Chinese.

<comment><USER40> Interesting take, thank you.

There's still a big difference: for us, privately owned companies with whose publications we struggle have been with us for a very long time.

Germany, where I'm from, has a more nuanced concept of free speech than the US, legally banning a greater (but overall still very small) number of topics or expressions.

However, outright banning of a media company is essentially impossible: prosecutors can only go after individual publications. They are using the same regulations to go after Facebook posts as they use to go after newspaper articles, As you might imagine it's not working out, because of sheer volume among other factors. So they've recently created a new law to simplify oversight over social media.

However this is not really a surprising new development. We're not "starting to see these problems", we've struggled with these problems throughout the existence of the German Republic. Technology is currently changing their shape, as it has before (e.g with the advent of private TV), and we're changing our approach to match.

Nothing to see here, really.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> It's quite eye opening the way that this article paints Facebook as a clueless giant, unknowingly enabling revolutions, swinging elections and upending societies.

I don't think there's any precedent for this.

<comment><USER42> I'd very strongly suggest you read media theory.

The role of media -- the press, cheap paper, high-speed printing, widespread literacy, pamphlets, telegraph, radio, cinema, audio tape, public address systems, mass media, advertising, television, cable, talk radio, BBS systems, Usenet, the Internet, the WWW (versions 1.0, 2.0, and mobile), etc., in political and social matters is absolutely profound. And often quite unexpected at least by the initial creators.

Elizabeth Eisenstein's _The Printing Press as an Agent of Change_ is one introduction to this, though there are many others. I'm going through Robert W. McChesney's work presently.

<comment><USER43> It's a depressing field if you go to deep I feel, especially if you read the most critical and pessimistic critical theorists in the field. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Benjamin and The Society of the Spectacle by Debord forever changed my vision on society. "My thoughts have been replaced by moving images..."

<comment><USER42> Thanks for the suggestions.

/me glances at the reading pile^Wstack^Wmountain^Wsingularity.

Um. Maybe ;-)

Actually, a friend has previously strongly recommended Guy Dubord, and I keep running across references. I do have ... _something_ by him. Dense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I am still unconvinced Facebook played any role in the outcome of the 2016 election. It played a role in the the form of the discussion but the actual outcome it didn't.

Most people vote based on some very personal and everyday issues. Things they experience in their lives not discussions on facebook no matter how many times they like it.

<comment><USER45> _> Most people vote based on some very personal and everyday issues. Things they experience in their lives not discussions on facebook [...]_

I'd say exactly the opposite. The politically empassioned folks I meet lately (on both sides) are always quicker to talk about a meme than a concrete issue.

E.g. Koch brothers, Shariah Law

<comment><USER44> So arent you saying the same as me?

<comment><USER45> I'd say that's the opposite.

The borderline conspiracy theories that seem popular are pretty different than "the garbage needs to be picked up on time" locally important issues that I thought you were talking about.

<comment><USER44> Not sure what you are commenting on

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> _On an earnings call earlier last week, Zuckerberg told investors and reporters "how upset I am that the Russians tried to use our tools to sow mistrust," adding that he was "dead serious" about findings ways to tackle the problem._

BS. He is only upset that he got caught.

<comment><USER47> I am more concern with the power he is wielding. He doesn't seem to think things through from other perspectives. The fact he dismissed the possibility of social hacking Facebook to influence others make me think he is surround by yes-men that only whistle to the tune he likes. Unfortunately, I have seen that too many times in startups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> If it wouldn't be facebook it would be something else. The bigger issue here is that the completely-decentralized or completely-centralized civil society of the earth that the internet creates is incompatible with the way the world is run for the past 2 centuries.

<comment><USER42> Whilst true, the fact remains that it _is_ Facebook, for now, and it's Facebook's place to admit, understand, and address this fact.

<comment><USER48> what i meant is that it is _not possible_ to address this fact. this is the new world order.

<comment><USER42> Fair enough. Though I'd be interested in your expanding on what you see the consequences / results being.

I'm tending toward "unfavourable".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I prefer reading bullshit on FB than having some kind of free speech censorship. It's like bombing countries for world peace, there is a mismatch doing that.

</comment><comment><USER49> That's what keeps Zuck awake, I'm sure (sarcasm.) Buy ads if you want to get your point across. The fact that "everyone" uses FB is a badge of honor, a goal everyone tries to reach.</comment>


Launch HN: CocuSocial (YC S17) – Marketplace for cooking classes at restaurants - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I am Billy Guan, co-founder of CocuSocial (https://www.cocusocial.com/) participating in YC S17 batch. CocuSocial is a marketplace for cooking classes that are hosted at restaurants and hotels.
Traditional cooking classes are expensive and intensive, but we want to make them affordable, easy to access and fun. We offer a relaxed way of learning, whether it is an interesting background about a cuisine, a useful cooking technique or a delicious recipe.
To lower down the cost of cooking class and make it accessible to everyone, we partner with local restaurants and hotels who host cooking classes during their slow nights or weekends.
We encourage everyone who love food or cooking to try us (only in New York so far) especially if you are celebrating a birthday, anniversary, or any other special occasions. We also help planning private events like corporate team building activities, bachelorette parties, bridal showers, fundraising events, etc.
Looking forward to hearing your feedback and thoughts. Thanks! <comment><USER2> I was browsing through the available classes and while I thought there were a ton of duplicates it turns out it's the same class on a different date.

It would make more sense for users to pick a class first and then see when it's available. So when browsing through classes you would see a list of the types of classes available (ravioli, sushi, etc), and once a user selects a class they can finalize their decision on the date.

Otherwise, browsing through classes is a bit annoying having to manually de- duplicate things you've seen before and checking them for minor details like, is this hand-rolling sushi class the same one or it with a different instructor? different restaurant?

Another suggestion, highlight the name of the restaurant. The restaurant hosting the event is bound to have more recognition than the instructor.

Make separate profile pages for all instructors, and have them linked straight from the cards that display classes on /products/

Where are the stars coming from? Every single instructor has 5 stars but there are no reviews and it makes everything come off a bit disingenuous. Get rid of those until you have real reviews.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. That is an excellent suggestion, we are planning to implement it in our next version, also you can see a list of all the classes without duplicate times on our homepage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hi, Billy..

There's that piece of "folk wisdom" about making sure company names don't mean unexpected things in other languages..

"Cocu", in French, a popular language, means "cuckold", as others have pointed out. As a French speaking person, when I read "CocuSocial", the first thing that popped into my mind was " _social platform for swingers_ ". I was a bit perplexed and went "Hmm, YC incubated a Bodily Fluids Exchange as a Service startup, that's interesting".

What are your thoughts on that? Is this deliberate to cause a certain break point of thoughts and titillate the inquisitive mind?

</comment><comment><USER4> Are you aware of the meaning and the potential joke in French language?

</comment><comment><USER5> Do you need a former chef, current JavaScript / Node / PHP developer on your team?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure. Happy to connect at email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know you mentioned in your description that this is only in New York so far, but that is not at all clear when visiting the site.

<comment><USER7> I found the same issue. I kept looking for a way to set my city.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks great. I'm in New York myself and could see trying your service with the wife.

Working in the restaurant "niche" myself, and think this is a fun idea you got here.

My one comment is that possibly your site should mention the actual restaurant on the front page, before drilling down, sort of how goldbely does. It makes it more enticing, plus the logistics of your startup means that there's little chance people will go off-platform to deal with the restaurant 1-1 (and vice- versa).

Also, I think using hotel kitchens is a smart idea. They are way more roomy than most restaurant kitchens, so you can accommodate more folks (obviously...).

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great idea! We will mention the actual restaurants in our next version. And we are hosting many cooking events in Marriott and Hilton. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sam Altman once said that YC only accepts applicants if they have the potential to become billion dollar companies.

What is CocuSocial's growth path to 9 zero's?

<comment><USER10> This is Gustaf from YC.

It might be good to think of the Airbnb story here. When Airbnb launched they were called Airbed & Breakfast and where offering airbeds in private rooms and their largest market was New York city. Few understood how big of an opportunity it was at the time.

Most of the very best marketplaces start with a small niche area that works very well and then expand out of that. Cocusocial is currently the largest cooking class provider in New York - the largest city in US.

</comment></comment><comment> d--b Just a comment: don't present yourself as a marketplace, you're not the kayak of food classes.

Your added value is that you're offering high quality cooking classes yet affordable (and that cannot be found elsewhere!)

<comment> d--b Also, you should stabilize that video on your landing page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your suggestion. We will work on the video in our next version:)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cool idea. In terms of adoption, I found there was too much information to know what to do right away (like, instinctively.)

As a suggestion, cut down on the UI components for choosing to book a class. As a comparative, take a look at the approach by AirBnB.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER12> Some quick initial feedback. The bounciness of the videos on the front page was a bit jarring to me initially. Good luck with your venture!

</comment><comment><USER13> This is such a cool idea! Looking forward to visit a class somewhere in Europe. Good luck with your venture!

</comment><comment><USER14> This seems like a great idea! Do you have any short-term plans to expand beyond New York?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for liking us. We are planning on this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Cocu" in French slang translates to "cuckold" (and with "social" being the same word, CocuSocial sounds extremely humorous). Just thought I'd mention it in case you ever are thinking about expanding internationally.

<comment><USER16> Here in Barcelona, there is a restaurant called "Menage a Trois"...

<comment><USER17> In America, a lot of Vietnamese restaurants have Pho in the name because it is a dish they serve, then the rest of the name makes it sound like some English word. One variation: Pho King. I have seen it said that Pho is pronounced Fuh, so Fucking is what that sounds like (according to some sources).

I also recall a wood stripping product called EZ Stripper demoed in the commercial by a busty blonde with those words emblazoned across her bosom. I also strongly suspect that pizza places who advertise their product as "hot and ready" are well aware that has sexual connotations and consider that to be a feature, not a bug.

Sex sells. Plenty of people use that fact intentionally.</comment></comment></comment>


San Francisco Considers Ban on Government's Use of Facial Recognition Technology - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2019/05/14/723193785/san-francisco-considers-ban-on-governments-use-of-facial-recognition-technology <comment><AUTHOR> This seems like a bad decision to me. We have a crime epidemic and it seems to me like facial recognition can help. My house has been broken into several times and I've been assaulted in areas of SF with clear video footage; why wouldn't we want to use tech to solve this problem? Forgetting my own situations, why wouldn't we want it for sex traffickers or terrorists? I don't understand why the tech issues should prevent it from being used- it isn't as if people are being locked up solely based on what the technology sees, there are humans involved too, and I think we should enable the humans with better tech. What are some good counter arguments?

<comment><USER2> The potential for abuse and false positives is just too high, and that class of failure mode is invited by the very mechanism that makes facial recognition effective: broadness of coverage.

IMO what SF needs is beat cops. What I want is a city where it feels like your actions might have consequences. Like there are actually police who are there to help citizens and intercept criminals – fast, and non-apathetically. That's what SF doesn't have.

Everything between broadway and townsend on the Y axis and the embarcadero and van ness on the X axis should have, at minimum, a beat cop per 4x4 block area. Doing laps all day, meeting and integrating with the community, and enforcing the law – lowering the time and variance between violation and consequence, instead of promoting the perception that you can mess around and 9 out of 10 times the cops are going to be too distracted to care.

Ditto for the mission.

When I lived in SOMA, just under the loin, the liquor store guys knew who all the baddies were. They knew their faces, their MOs, where they hung out... nobody cared. The police presence in SF is so ethereal and abstract. It was so disappointing. The people on the street have the answers, and they're not exactly a sophisticated group. But it seems like the system just doesn't want to interface with the population at that level.

I want old fashioned preventative community policing, not high-tech post-crime people monitoring.

There's a court system component, as well. My understanding is that the courts just don't have the bandwidth to enforce the law in all cases, so they have to let the small stuff slide, which just creates a system with no consequences for petty crime. SF's situation is very unsurprising when viewed through that lens.

<comment><USER3> This a hundred times. Why is police in SF so bad at dealing with criminality? I am actually looking for a real answer.

<comment><USER4> because we, as progressive city, shouldn't hurt criminal's feelings, they are people too. Also what's with this gestapo idea of telling other people what they cannot do at their wish in public? /s

Sarcasm aside - only that much can be done by the police if there is no point in doing it. Let's not forget about DA office with revolving door, making sure anyone apprehended will be released and at the same place tomorrow without any consequences to their actions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Critics quoted in this article and many others I've read argue that the technology is deeply flawed, highly inaccurate. Does anyone have actual stats on this? Furthermore, does anyone working in the field have any facts or opinions about the rate at which the technology is improving? Left unchecked, how far off is the day when a city could implement widespread facial recognition that has terrifying accuracy?

<comment><USER6> From my understanding, the technology is not deeply flawed. It just has accuracy problems when dealing with edge cases.

Facial recognition is not a 100% independent solution, but instead should aid other systems, including human-run systems. I think this is the concept that critics fail to grasp.

<comment><USER5> Do you think there will come a time where it is a 100% independent solution? I'm sure that is the goal for some companies and organizations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm sure the usual fearmongering arguments will be used to promote the technology. But I have to ask: what's the upside of this tech? It needs to scan everyone's face at all times to get a match. What are the applications and what's the upside? How does it compare with a CCTV system like in London or Singapore? I'd like to understand the trade off.

</comment><comment> grayed-down While I have a very high disregard for San Franseptic, I do applaud this decision if it comes to pass.

I think the broad use of facial recognition by governments will lead to nothing but disaster for its non-violent citizens.

<comment><USER8> Look up Singapore, and how disastrous it is.

<comment><USER9> The google results for 'Singapore facial recognition' are fairly useless, would you mind elaborating on their program?

<comment><USER8> I get a bunch of results.

[https://govinsider.asia/connected-gov/singapore-to-use- facia...](https://govinsider.asia/connected-gov/singapore-to-use-facial- recognition-for-national-digital-identity/)

<comment><USER9> All of the results I got were related to your link or a different program to put 100,000 cameras into street lamps. It looks like neither of these has happened yet, so I think it is too early to judge the consequences.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The LastPass breach could have been worse - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3047469/tech-forecast/lastpasss-security-breach-is-alarming-but-it-could-have-been-a-lot-worse

<comment><USER2> For comments follow link- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9721212](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9721212)</comment>


Penn (of Penn&Teller) tries to charge a TSA employee with assault - <AUTHOR> http://www.pennandteller.com/03/coolstuff/penniphile/roadpennfederalvip.html

<comment><USER3> Point of order, in that this doesn't seem to be from the xray pushback - <USER2> seems to be from 2002.

Page title is "Federal V.I.P Penn - 11/13/02"

</comment><comment><USER4> I can't actually reach the page, however, there is established legal precedent that explicitly removes immunity from any Federal officer "just doing their job" if what they are actually doing is illegal.

This is sometimes called a "Bivens" claim; see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bivens>

</comment><comment><USER5> this is a belated answer to the geophile's question a few days ago at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1898257> : if you feel you're assaulted, you should call for the local police. They tried to discourage him, but he stood his ground. Here's what happened:

Finally Metro PD shows up. It's really interesting. First of all, the cop is a BIG P&T fan and that ain't hurting. Second, I get the vibe that he is WAY sick of these federal leather-sniffers. He has that vibe that real cops have toward renta-cops....

I tell the cop the story, in a very funny way. The cop, the voice of sanity says, "What's wrong with you people? You can't just grab a guy's crank without his permission." I tell him that my genitals weren't grabbed and the cop says, "I don't care, you can't do that to people. That's assault and battery in my book."

<comment><USER6> Penn came out OK, but it seems like Penn he had a few good breaks. The guy in San Diego didn't fare so well, possibly because he threatened to call the cops if he was groped. Penn was groped, and then he called the cops. While I don't think that we're going to see consistent cause-and-effect from the entire TSA workforce, these cases are definitely useful in finding out how to react.

I've also been wondering about civil suits. Maybe that approach will be tried soon. It does seem like the number of incidents (or incidents becoming known) is increasing.

<comment><USER7> The problem with the get-groped-then-call-cops approach is that _most_ TSA employees will tell you that they're about to touch you, giving you the implicit option to leave (which of course costs $10k but is still an option). This particular employee did not give Penn this choice, which is what makes it assault.

Further, it's been mentioned elsewhere that the Supreme Court determined that TSA _does_ have the authority to detain you in the airport, which means that even if you choose to walk out and risk the fine, they can still physically restrain you without legally assaulting you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it he handled it pretty well, but I really hope he doesn't press charges.

I'm as against the ridiculous new regulations as anyone, but I'm surprised by the general lack of sympathy for the actual TSA agents on the ground, _regardless_ of anything...just as a matter of course.

As far as I can tell the agent in question made an honest mistake, they didn't notify Penn. I have a hard time believing anyone who travels could be unaware of the new regulations. This doesn't excuse the mistake, but it's important to put it in context.

They definitely dropped the ball, and deserve some sort of chastisement... but is slapping them with an assault charge really fair?

It seems to me it would be taking it out on the little guy...

I don't envy these people...they're generally hated and I don't know if you've notice but the general American public is not largely composed of people I'd want to lay hands on.

They probably have to frisk 1000's of people a day, and as many in Penn's story confirm this is all so new and up in the air.

Everyone makes mistakes sometimes....it's unavoidable. Doctors sometimes make mistakes, and people die. Generally though, they are only punished if they really screwed up...and even then not with criminal charges.

It's also worth noting Doctors are generally well paid for the responsibilities their position entails.

TSA agents are probably not paid terribly well, but regardless are expected to be perfect machines.

The problem is all this stuff about sexual assault clouds the issue....there is a lot of potential for a (and I hesitate to use the term, but I'm not sure how else to phrase it) "real" sexual assault to occur...where a TSA agent is clearly and deliberately overstepping the bounds...and when that happens it may be lost in all the other stories of people who are shrieking "sexual assault" just because they (rightly) disagree with this stupid policy. I have a hard time believing Penn really felt as if he was assualted, except perhaps a metaphorical assault against his dignity and personal liberties. That is a serious assault...but this agent is not the one responsible for that.

The attitude some people have towards TSA agents strikes me as childish and incredibly entitled.

We should be holding individual agents accountable, but I can't help like feeling people are holding them to a higher standard than is really realistic, and are misdirecting their anger....it should be directed at the policy makers not the poor shmoes who it falls upon to enforce it...people just trying to make a living and get by.

I would say making a fuss, and even calling the Cops was a good idea as it really registers the outrage and puts a cost on keeping this stupid policy....ruining some poor shmoes life with actual assault charges? not so much...

<comment><USER9> Right, so if a Jew was getting walked to gas chamber, they shouldn't get mad at the Nazi that was doing it because they were just following orders?

OBVIOUSLY it isn't as bad, but you have every right to get mad at someone for doing something that's oppressive, even if they are a wage-slave.

<comment><USER8> Well there's a couple problems here:

1) I'm not saying "don't get mad"...I explicitly said otherwise. I'm saying "we should punish appropriately"

2) The basis for this is not so much that they were following orders....the basis is they made a mistake while carrying out their job.

There's a big difference between someone who is a murderer for a living and a Doctor who makes a (reasonable) mistake and kills someone.

The Doctor shouldn't get off Scott-free, but neither should they be charged with first degree murder.

The "just following orders" bit comes in because let's be honest: There seems to be an undercurrent here based on the fact that Penn has a disagreement with this policy.

So Penn basically "has it out" for this guy in advance based on the fact that he disagrees with what the guy's bosses ordered.

Like I said before, the guy screwed up...but it must be put in context.

I think it's important to discriminate between someone who through circumstances does something oppressive, and someone who ACTS oppressive.

In the case of the former, you should take issue with the act, and the circumstances.

In the latter case, you also take issue with the person.

I don't have much to go on, but I get the general impression that this was just some poor shmoe trying to do his job. He didn't set out to violate Penn's rights.

Penn shouldn't just drop it...but neither should he ruin the guys life.

It's very easy (and imho a little lazy) to say "well they should just quit their job instead of being a tool for the man.

There's so much wrong with that sentiment I don't know where to begin.

To answer your question directly:

No, you should not as a matter of course.

A lot of Nazis were practically kids. They may have been drafted...if they disobeyed orders, they might have been shot or sent to the Eastern Front.

By staying, they might have been able to treat the Jews a little better than their replacement would...who knows.

Again, this doesn't absolve them but it's important to put in context.

Who you should direct your anger at is the people who ordered the Jews into the gas chamber...and the people who agreed with it.</comment></comment></comment>


AirAsia pilot flies to Melbourne instead of Malaysia after navigation error - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/sep/07/airasia-pilot-flies-melbourne-malaysia-navigation-error <comment><USER2> Here's a better report.

[https://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/2016/09/07/atsb- rep...](https://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/2016/09/07/atsb-reports- cockpit-cockup-airasiax-flight-kl/)

The Guardian article misses the bits that are probably most interesting to HN:

This kind of thing happens about once a month.

The procedure that was supposed to prevent it was to use the up and down arrows instead of the keypad, because that way you can only stuff up a little bit.

It took until 2013 for Airbus to patch the A330 navigation system to reject manually entered latitudes and longitudes that are inconsistent with the current GPS fix.

Only a minority of the airliners in service installed the patch.</comment>


A FaceNet Neural Network Model in JavaScript for Face Recognition and Clustering - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zixia/facenet <comment><AUTHOR> FaceNet is a deep convolutional network designed by Google, trained to solve face verification, recognition, and clustering problem with efficiently at scale.

1\. directly learns a mapping from face images to a compact Euclidean space where distances directly correspond to a measure of face similarity.

2\. optimize the embedding face recognition performance using only 128-bytes per face.

3\. achieves the accuracy of 99.63% on Labeled Faces in the Wild (LFW) dataset, and 95.12% on YouTube Faces DB.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you decide what project to work on? - <AUTHOR>

I've been wanting to start a new, personal project but I can't make up my mind on what to do. I don't get to build new stuff at work. I work with kernel maintenance at work, and like systems work. I've been learning about web app engineering. ML seems neat and I covered the first unit of Professor Ng's ML course.
Part of my dilemma is how do I align my long term career goals with my free time? I'm pretty much behind the technology curve on anything new. At work, it's C on linux for embedded work and not much else. I should learn javascript, I guess, but I don't know what to do with it. I'm petrified about being obsolete in a few years.
How do you select a new project? It seems like everything I think of is already done and I don't know how I could do better. <comment><USER2> I'm going to tell you what I did when I was 14 (I had played with HTML from 12 but nothing else) and was just starting out.

I didn't care what I did as long as it was legal and made money from $0. The result was the first 'venture' I did was "forum boosting" - I literally was paid by forums owners to create fake accounts on their forums, and post on them.

Now, I'm not telling you to go and do forum boosting (even though its profitable some 8 years later) what I'm trying to say is, _do you want to make money from it right now?_

If YES, then who cares if someone else has done it or if its better. Look at Betamax Vs. VHS (amongst a ton of other examples) just build something that makes money and ensure everyone knows about it, who cares if its not as good or even just as good because if everyone knows about yours and not about the other just as good/better service, you win.

If NO, then get involved in some open source project(s) and when something you seem interested in appears, then do that.

If the answer is a mixture of the two, then you still probably should get involved in some open source project(s) so then when something does come along you find interesting then you can just do that.

Who cares if someone else has done it or you don't think you can do it better right now because, you may actually be undervaluing yourself and can actually do it better than those guys.

<comment><USER3> +1

Go with your guts and just build it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This question spans not only personal programming projects, but all sorts of spare time "hobby" projects and what politicos would refer to as "lifelong learning" in general.

What's he best use of my spare time an energy right now?

Counterpoint answer to others in his thread: Dijkstra's "Do only what only you can do", if you overcome the intimidating aspect of seeing yourself as uniquely positioned (not necessarily uniquely talented) might be the droid you're looking for.

</comment><comment><USER5> You could contribute to OSS. Or look around at github for inspiration. Or look for a non-technical cofounder who already has an idea.

</comment><comment><USER6> Every time I have a question like this, I like to just do a reset session on my life goals and what is I want to accomplish in the next 6 mo to a year. When doing this I try to let my brain roam free with ideas and not get caught up in the 'how' or 'what's possible' thoughts. Hopefully after a good hour session, some really great stuff will surface for you. Best o luck!</comment>


How Slack Decides to Send a Notification - <AUTHOR> https://whimsical.com/P53PjXCBWEi2fdMjP2Hti <comment><AUTHOR> I saw this as I was browsing the flowcharts page at Whimsical [0] and was surprised by how complex the process is!

More info on how it was built on the Slack Engineering blog: [https://slack.engineering/reducing-slacks-memory- footprint-4...](https://slack.engineering/reducing-slacks-memory- footprint-4480fec7e8eb?gi=3bf3cd0d6b6e)

[0] [https://whimsical.com/flowcharts/](https://whimsical.com/flowcharts/)</comment>


What is an author? - <AUTHOR> http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/uthor

<comment><USER2> > Literary criticism, after all, is not some nebulous cloud of musings and > opinion.

It is precisely that. Always has been, always will be, because critics are of a fundamentally different kind than the authors whose work they analyze. On rare and wonderful occasions they can produce an insightful and amusing cloud of musings and opinion, but far more often it is a pretentious and turgid one.

Can you imagine a non-physician setting out to critically analyze the work of a surgeon? A non-scientist setting out to critically analyze the work of a physicist? We don't have to imagine the latter: they are called philosophers of science, and from Popper to Cartwright they are all too often almost terminally embarrassing to the people whose work they talk about.

When critics proclaim "the death of the author" they aren't saying authors don't exist and don't have intentions, they are saying "You are dead _to me_!" They are disowning the author in an angry snit, because authors so routinely disappoint their expectations. It would be rather sad if it wasn't so farcically funny.

Social media are allowing those declared dead to inconveniently crash the critics' party, and this is a good thing. It is very difficult to continue to proclaim that the intentions of the maker of an artifact don't matter when they come along and explain their design choices to you, in public, on-the- record, for all the world to see.</comment>


Inbox Zero for Life - <AUTHOR> https://xph.us/2013/01/22/inbox-zero-for-life.html <comment><USER3> > After a few weeks doing this stuff I didn't just get there, I've stayed at > inbox zero virtually the entire time

Would be interested to see how he's going 4+ years later.

At least for personal mailboxes I've found 'inbox zero' a thankless task and have settled for "inbox as a feed" in which I trust that anything important will catch my attention (e.g. via Priority Inbox or multiple emails) and everything else will fade away. For what it's worth, this means I currently have 12k+ emails that I'll never open.

<comment><USER4> Why don't you delete mails or unsubscribe from them? If you get so many mails that you may need multiple reminder mails to get your attention, your system sucks. If not for you, them for the people trying to communicate with you.

<comment><USER3> This is just for personal mailboxes, where signal to noise ratio is very low.

Priority Inbox highlights anything that actually comes from a human.

Multiple emails are more effective (for me) for automated and marketing emails, e.g. "right, I should remember to buy some more shirts from that company that keeps sending me offers", or "that domain is expiring soon, I noted that it was 30 days out last email but now it's getting closer".

Given the importance/actionability of these kinds of emails roughly approximates status updates on Facebook's News Feed, my approach has been similar (browse, trust that my eye will catch anything important, don't waste effort trying to read through every single piece of information).

You're right that I could make an effort to read through each email I receive immediately and decide whether its actionable, but this approach works well for me with very little effort.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Please explain to me, what happens if you receive a < 30s email which is related to a > 30s email that is being starred for later use? For example:

       30 s : "Hej Joe, can you send <document> to <client>?"
       5 hrs: "Joe, also make sure they have signed the NDA first."

This super-optimized-workday ideology can bite you in the ass if you take it too far.

</comment><comment><USER6> I use a similar system, but was still unable to overcome my email ADD. So I built an app that keeps my inbox clean except for specific times of the day.

In short, any inbound email is redirected to a sub-folder. Three times a day, those emails are moved to my Inbox.

Now I only check my email those three times a day because I know my Inbox will be empty at all other times. At those three times, I apply a modified GTD system to empty the Inbox entirely.

I whitelist emails from my wife so they arrive in real-time.

This works on mobile and desktop.

The app is public and free: [https://dndemail.com](https://dndemail.com)

</comment><comment><USER7> How I do this with Outlook: Create Search Folder in mailbox that displays only Unread and Flagged items from the Inbox. Work out of this folder, flagging items that I cannot address immediately and marking items as read that I do.

</comment><comment><USER8> I guess I just protect my inbox more (or I'm just not that important - <USER2> more likely) but I don't have an issue using "Inbox Zero" without an "Inbox Zero" method. Am I alone?

</comment><comment><USER9> Author just shifts everything important to gmails star menu.

If this advice is the solution to some peoples inbox problem then I don't understand their inbox problem.

<comment><USER10> Author addresses this in the conclusion:

> My biggest worry was that I'd just move the problem to another place: > instead of an ever-growing inbox I'd have an ever-growing starred items > folder. But a curious thing happened. My heavy inbox burden shrank a bit > after the first processing session. And it just kept shrinking. My new > starred items burden feels qualitatively different. Staring at a bold to-do- > list inbox makes it all too easy to throw up your hands and close the > browser. After all, even if you were to pick one of those emails and take > care of it, it'd probably be replaced with 3 more, like a hydra, by the time > you returned to your inbox. The ground is constantly shifting under you. On > the other hand, your starred items folder only ever contains things that you > put there. You can look at it, pick one thing to do, do that thing, and look > again: there is now one fewer thing! You and you alone decide when to > process incoming mail and star new messages. This might seem like an > academic distinction, but let me tell you, it feels worlds apart, and I > actually manage to knock off my starred items at a regular pace. They don't > pile up.</comment></comment>


Not So Cuil After All - <AUTHOR> http://www.hostscope.com/templature/not-so-cuil-after-all/ <comment><USER2> Unless the blog author builds software that never crashes -- even when it get millions of hits on its first day, then he should cut them some slack. I'll put money on the fact that Google didn't have the same kind of traffic on their first day that Cuil did. And Google has had 10 years to get it write. Yet he expects perfection on the first day.

<comment><USER3>
      s/get it write/get it right/

<comment><USER4> you forgot a semicolon

<comment><USER3> I am appreciating the joke.

      $ echo get it write | perl -pe"s/write/right/"
      get it right

The semicolon is not required.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "There's no such thing as bad publicity" - but there is such a thing as going public before your technology is ready, and thus turning off all the early adopters.

Most of the geek/connected crowd has now heard of Cuil. And most have now tried it.

And, sadly for Cuil, most will never try it again. That's one hell of a wasted PR shot. Rookie mistake, huh.

</comment><comment> captain-m Cuil does have some things going for it though. They have a great privacy policy and the category function seems to be working quite well.

Hopefully the search results will improve over time. I'd love to see a Google competitor.

</comment><comment><USER6> The initial reactions to Cuil remind me a lot of the initial reactions to Google ~10 years ago.

Does anybody truly have a reasonable expectation that Cuil will match or better Google on their initial release?

<comment><USER7> No, I was impressed with google the first time I used it, and that was early on.

<comment><USER6> I guess my early results were different, I often recall getting "better" results on Yahoo and AltaVista, but preferring Googles overall UI better, so I kept at it.</comment></comment></comment>


Understanding Machine Learning: From Theory to Algorithms - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~shais/UnderstandingMachineLearning/copy.html <comment><USER2> The author has also kindly posted a solution manual for all the exercises [0]. Last time I checked (year ago) this wasn't available publicly. I love books that have solution manuals available, crucial for self-learning.

0.[https://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~shais/UnderstandingMachineLearnin...](https://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~shais/UnderstandingMachineLearning/exercises.html)</comment>