What was your best experience at a conference? Worst? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I find my best conference experiences aren't the sessions themselves, but happen in the hallways or at optional side-events. Two conferences I've been to had skydiving as an optional activity, and I've found that's been a great way to make new friends & long lasting connections. Probably something about sharing a near-death experience together.

Most profitable experience was complaining in the hallway to another attendee about the previous speaker. We bonded over our griping & they became a client of mine a couple of years later (even though that wasn't an intention I'd had at the time).

Worst experience was a conference whose topics changed after I bought the tickets, flying halfway around the world for it, then struggling to stay awake for the final sessions of the day. I actually skipped the next conference day, but the attendees were great people & became good friends, so I still got my money's worth.

[Gratuitous plug: I maintain a list of conferences for indie developers, digital nomads and other bootstrapper/DIY types at [http://indieconference.com/](http://indieconference.com/) I mainly use it as a list of justifiable excuses for travel.]

<comment><AUTHOR> Great list! Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Worst: Smalltalk/networking. I'm pretty social (perhaps now), but it took a lot (attending conferences, 2 years+, once per month) to feel comfortable approaching and talking to strangers - and the crazy thing was I was in a buy- side position, not sell-side, so I was waiting for others to strike a conversation. Now, 10 years later after getting over the hump, it is much easier. The biggest thing for me was getting comfortable talking to a couple of really genuine sales people. And genuine meant getting to know them very gradually over these 2+ years.

1\. If a conference organiser, it's really useful to not just put people in a room with canapes and drinks for a 'networking session' but to actually plan something that can connect people. An event where people can create meaningful conversation, not have flippant conversation.

2\. If a participant, read-up by listening to some excellent podcasts by manager-tools.com - they cover tips in a far better way than I could do in a quick HN post (it's free, with a vast range of content, not just for managers).

<comment><AUTHOR> So you'd say that conferences could be great if people have numerous meaningful conversations, but that doesn't happen as often as you'd like?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The best conferences I had are the ones I barely attended any talks in them. Mostly because I met some very interesting people outside and the discussions/debates were more interesting, I've made some great friendships there.

My worst was actually a Droidcon, where most the talks were a word-by-word repeated versions I already saw on Youtube.

<comment><AUTHOR> How did you go about finding people to talk to?

<comment><USER4> The first time was quite scary, but it was a challenge I set for myself.

There was this group that were louder and generally "more alive" than the rest. So I approached them, and lurked for a while, after a few minutes I said hi and introduced myself, and that's it!

After that I threw myself out of my comfort zone at every event. My goal was to meet as many interesting people as I could, and I did.

I was young back then, probably one of the youngest at those kind of events (that probably helped).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Best: Dr. Anita Sengupta from NASA JPL, keynote speaker at GOTO Chicago, speaking inspirationally about her work on Mars entry systems, and also about women in engineering. If I didn't have a family, I'd be very tempted to learn whatever I had to learn (and take the paycut I'd have to take) to work at NASA and be a part of something big.

<comment><USER6> Agreed, saw her at YOW last year. Here's the presentation: [http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YvMQfqLdeWw](http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YvMQfqLdeWw)</comment></comment>


A viral "launching soon" form - <AUTHOR> http://blog.forkly.com/a-viral-launching-soon-form

<comment><USER2> It's an interesting ploy, but the success is going to be based entirely on what type of beta tester you're trying to attract.

Personally, as an introverted tech, I'd be interested in signing up, poking around, and filing bug reports, but requiring me to spam my friends list for an invite isn't something I'm willing to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> You make a good point. We've been thinking about other ways for people to move up in the line that involve some of those things.

We don't _require_ you to spam your friends list for an invite, but if you share the link with your friends, you'll get it earlier :)

<comment><USER3> For me personally I wouldn't share things with my friends that are an unknown quality unless they themselves traffic in things that are of an unknown quality. Most of the people on my friend's list are not interested in beta testing.

<comment><USER4> Same. Anyone know why they already changed it back?

<comment><USER5> It's still the 'viral' one for me. Home page asks for the email, then gives me <http://fork.ly/6KYLWf> .

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> StackExchange did something similar with their private beta where they asked you to embed an image and link to their site somewhere on the web. Clever SEO hack...

</comment><comment><USER7> Kind of reminds me of Dropbox's viral referral program. The spam-ish aspect can get annoying at a point, but the interesting thing is that it's not the website that's spamming you, it's your friends, so you can't really be mad at the website.

This makes me think the viral referral model still has some untapped potential.

<comment><USER8> It doesn't need to be spammy. If it were me, I would just feel a little more incentive to post about it on Twitter/FB and other places than I would otherwise. Brilliant idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a one time idea, this is unique and clever.

Unfortunately, I foresee many "me too" companies that will make this a tired paradigm.

<comment><USER10> I disagree. I could see this working over and over if executed well.

Imagine a brand new site called Hulu that promises free TV shows in a legal way. To get on the beta, you do the normal list sign up but they tell you that you could get first access if you referred 3 people. Would you dig out 3 people to refer? My response is "Hell ya!" if I think my friends will like it.

How you get people to want the service bad enough that they'll invite others to get on a priority list will likely be the thing that people will need to focus on.

<comment><USER9> If I was desperate to get an account, I would create fake e-personas to sign up as well. I would be embarrassed to spam my friends for my benefit.

<comment><USER10> "if I think my friends will like it."

<comment><USER9> So, through this process, your early access is restricted to sites your friends like?

<comment><USER10> If I like something, I'm sure I'll know 3 people who will likely like the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think for the "viral" launch page, there should be some vague information about what the site/product is about.

This was covered on HN previously, although misleading title. "Wordpress Themes for Launching your Minimum Viable Product" <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1697302>

</comment><comment><USER12> If this works, someone should productize this: a "launching soon" widget that anyone can use.

</comment><comment><USER13> It reminds me of Living Social referral program:

After you buy the deal, you'll get a unique link to share. If three people buy the deal using your link, then your deal is free.

</comment><comment><USER14> What if this idea is changed to some sort of competition? Something like the top 10 people who refer the most friends will get a free subscription as a prize.

</comment><comment><USER15> This has worked well for us at <http://feastery.com>. No issues with the quality of the invitees.

</comment><comment><USER16> They already changed it to the standard system...

<comment><USER17> No, you put in your email and then get the link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Spam friends; obtain bauble.

It's not _that_ new an idea. I tend to lose a teeny bit of respect for people who fall for it.

</comment><comment><USER19> Site's down

</comment><comment><USER20> Museo logotype FTW</comment>


Qlinqo - HTML5 Plinko Game - <AUTHOR> http://www.masteredsoftware.com/qlinqo/

<comment><USER2> Well this was awkward. I don't know how it happened.

<http://i.minus.com/iyCNAFZpPgfY7.png>

Did you make the game? I love that the instructions are embedded in the game. Strange color scheme and effects though. I did like the sounds.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I did make the game, it is more of a canvas experiment than a fully polished game, that is why the color scheme maybe a bit odd. You should try to get over 20,000 points and you'll get a surprise at the end!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've just made a change so that there is a bit of random angular momentum and position when you drop a disk, this should make things more interesting (and a bit harder).</comment>


The end of capitalism? (vid) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=859580963 <comment><USER2> "the government needs to step in or capitalism could cease to function."

they have it backwards, when government steps in capitalism ceases to function.</comment>


A programming language for living cells - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2016/programming-language-living-cells-bacteria-0331 <comment><USER2> This is true or yet another April fool hoax?</comment>


Stack Overflow: The Importance of Onboarding Developers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.careers.stackoverflow.com/2014/04/16/the-importance-of-onboarding-developers/

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here - something of a follow up to a previous post on my first six weeks here.

Interested to hear thoughts.</comment>


Microsoft Bing not only shows child pornography, it suggests it - a-wu https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/10/unsafe-search/ <comment><USER2> I'm not surprised. I remember reading an article a long time ago about how porn was easier to find with Bing than Google, because the latter was doing a lot more censoring.

...and in general, I've found Bing to be more useful for searching obscure things. There's more spam in the results, but at the same time you're more likely to find what you're looking for amongst them.

But unfortunately with articles like this, it seems that might change... as much as I'm against CP and abuse in general, I'm also against censorship and the degradation of search engine results to only the most mainstream/popular topics.

<comment><USER3> Microsoft invests significantly into fighting this filth. Don't let someone's news agenda lead you into false conclusions.

<comment><USER4> Yea, they filter their e-mail platforms for sure, but part of it might be the justice department binding their hands.

People in companies that track this stuff down get special hash lists from certain law enforcement agencies and the evidence itself is pretty much a controlled substance; so they need special authorization to safely handle and report it with a chain of custody. Two Microsoft employees got PTSD because of the large amount of data they had to check:

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/12/two-former- micro...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/12/two-former-microsoft- employees-developed-ptsd-watching-child/)

I knew a lawyer who had to defend someone in this type of case. He was allowed to view the evidence (he chose not to), but only him. No paralegals, no one else in his office that wasn't directly sitting on the defense table.

If you're not granted specific authorization, even looking at this content is illegal, so Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Google, etc have a very limited staff of people who are even authorized to handle this stuff.

It's a difficult problem.

<comment><USER5> They don't just filter their e-mail platforms and consume hash lists from law enforcement agencies. On the contrary, Microsoft funds and freely distributes the most common tool for checking photos (not file hash based, I think proprietary). That's likely the project the employees you mentioned were on, a job I wouldn't wish on anyone I know. I hope they were well supported both while working and afterward.

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/photodna](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/photodna)

<comment><USER6> It states immediately below the fold that it uses hash lists.

<comment><USER5> I want to avoid using the term - even though they use it - because it's not a hash function like most people are familiar from computer science. Their "hash" function is resistant to alterations and is more like a "fingerprint".

Edit: to be completely clear, PhotoDNA isn't a cryptographic hash. It's a hash function that maximizes similarity of hashes based on inputs, and is probably closer to a bloom filter in some respects.

<comment><USER7> These algorithms are called "fuzzy hashing." Examples include "ssdeep," "smapsum," and "nilsimsa."

<comment><USER8> Is this what I know as 'image hash'?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Search engines, messaging services, and social networks that are all threatened by this should forego their competitive instincts and share information about how to combat this issue. If Google doesn't have this issue but Bing and DuckDuckGo do, I'd feel morally bound as Google to share best practices to help them prevent indexing, suggesting, and retrieving this content.

<comment><USER10> There's a reason this was shared with TechCrunch before it was shared with Microsoft.

Do we know Google didn't also have this issue? Or did they have it, patch it, and then make the press aware. Look back at Facebook's PR groups spamming TechCrunch with "tips" and hoping to seed negative articles about their adversaries. This whole thing, while a very valid problem that needs to be addressed immediately- reads exactly like some PR group dropping tips on a client's competitors to TechCrunch.

Forgive me if I'm skeptical of the motives of someone who cares more about the press finding out _first_ that Bing is leaking potential child porn, over actually removing access to child porn.

<comment><USER11> I don't think this needs to be a conspiracy. Bing is far behind. I worked on a suicide awareness project when I was at Quora, and at least at the time Google had help links featured for suicide subjects and Bing had instructions on how to kill yourself. Arguably Bing had the better search results but not the high ground. This could be another one of those cases.

<comment><USER12> >> _I worked on a suicide awareness project when I was at Quora, and at least at the time Google had help links featured for suicide subjects and Bing had instructions on how to kill yourself. Arguably Bing had the better search results but not the high ground._

This is not being behind, it's showing what the user wants. BING should have banners or ads on suicide prevention, that's all. If you want to kill yourself, a suicide prevention page is not the most relevant one.

This story is to give a black eye to MSFT, they could have just told them instead of doing studies, but that doesn't bring clicks to their site. A lot of times competitors are behind such stories. Not necessarily google, it could be a vendor hoping that MS hires them.

<comment><USER11> It's definitely being behind. Helping your users die will affect your ability to profit from them in the future, it also costs almost nothing to show a suicide prevention banner with a help line, and they are known to help prevent suicide.

That said, I'm not at all arguing that a competitor or vendor wasn't the reason for this article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The search given at the start of the article, "porn kids", now returns that they have nothing matching. Unlike other two word searches, where if it doesn't find something matching both words, it looks for similar things, "porn kids" is a flat out statement that it has nothing, suggesting that they explicitly special cased it.

"porn teens" returns plenty of results, and I doubt that they are all teens who are legally old enough.

One of the two word phrases that should not have had any matches that I tested was "porn isomorphisms". As expected, it gave me a lot of porn that had nothing to do with isomorphisms, and a small amount related to isomorphisms that had nothing to do with porn. All the porn involved women.

I then tried "porn homomorphisms", expecting similar results to "porn isomorphisms", except maybe the "homo" in there would lead to more male porn. To my surprise, there isn't any porn in the results! It's almost all math stuff, or word stuff.

Bing is weird.

<comment><USER14> > "porn teens" returns plenty of results, and I doubt that they are all teens > who are legally old enough.

Because they hire people who are 18 or 19 who look younger.

While I can't dig up an article about it, there was a guy in Florida who was brought to trial on child pornography charges. Some "expert" insisted the girl couldn't possibly be 18. The woman had to fly over and testify that she was 18 at the time.

<comment><USER15> Lupe Fuentes:

> In 2009, federal agents arrested a man in Puerto Rico on suspicion of > possessing child pornography that included Fuentes. At trial, a pediatrician > testified that Lupe was underage based on her appearance. Lawyers for the > defense subpoenaed her to show her passport, proving that she was 19 years > old at the time of filming.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lupe_Fuentes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lupe_Fuentes)

<comment><USER14> I see I got the location wrong. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > There's no excuse for a company like Microsoft that earned $8.8 billion in > profit last quarter to be underfunding safety measures.

Perhaps the problem is that there is an excuse: it is likely that they believe that they are neither responsible for the images they index, nor are they beholden to proactively engage with law enforcement.

This is where treading the line between conduit and publisher can bite the corporation who is attempting to do so. While Microsoft does not host the images, it does index them and serve links to them. What's more, they also host thumbnails and metadata that allow the images to be browsed and discovered.

Because they host the thumbnails and metadata, are they not a publisher? They're hardly acting as a disinterested router of opaque data when the data served is stored on their servers and indexed by their algorithms.

<comment><USER12> Do you really think Microsoft is showing them on purpose? What's the gain? I can see the loss and not just in PR.

IMO, they failed but others failed to properly screen cp, until they fixed it.

<comment><USER16> I do not believe there is any purposeful or malicious intent from Microsoft. But that doesn't mean they cannot or should not be held responsible for the data that they host and serve.

<comment><USER12> Fine, but responsible in what way? Not like they did it on purpose. Their bots found the images, Bing just forgot to exclude them. Now they're work a lot more to exclude them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This article doesn't do justice to the work Microsoft has done with combatting child pornography in an attempt to paint Bing as some intentionally neglected backwater and Microsoft as some criminally negligent monolith. Microsoft's PhotoDNA is far and away the most widely shared detection tool and is in place with a ridiculous range of organizations. More importantly, Microsoft works closely with LE and makes it easy for their partners to integrate with LE. Google avoids the problem in the article entirely by doing a nudity blacklist for image results, which nicely solves the problem of some reporter doing a hit job, but avoids actually doing anything that makes finding material more difficult.

There are plenty of problems with black-listing based approaches, and I strongly disagree with some of the technical decisions made in PhotoDNA [1], but Microsoft should be credited for their commitment to reporting and prosecuting, and bringing their processes to other companies who otherwise would be unable to dedicate the resources required to be effective.

[1] [https://github.com/deveyNull/phistOfFury](https://github.com/deveyNull/phistOfFury)

</comment><comment><USER18> What I find bizarre is that there would be so much child pornography still left in the indexable _public_ internet. I would have imagined that pedophiles would have been pushed underground long ago. Why hasn't law enforcement attacked the hosters and sources of such content? Surely finding them can't be that difficult if even bing finds the material.

<comment><USER19> Apparently one of the reasons for removal of all NSFW content from tumblr was the sheer amount of CP on it - someone on reddit wrote a whole comment about it. Basically people created lots of blogs linking to other CP content, which was re-shared, but even if the original blog was deleted you could still see the re-shares and find the original content.

<comment><USER20> [https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/a2r4h4/whats_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/a2r4h4/whats_the_deal_with_tumblr_banning_all_nsfw/eb0z65x/)

Appears to be the comment you are referencing in case anyone else is looking for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The real story is much different. Interpol, the FBI, etc have been handed a golden tool to find child porn users. They could be prosecuting all those sites and investigating their visitors, but instead, they turn a blind eye.

Rather than stop real predators seeking out this garbage, they run sting operations to entrap people who are too uninformed and poor to fight back then pat themselves on the back about fighting crime.

<comment><USER22> Chasing users feels like a complete waste of time. Taking down the sources (e.g. on the darkweb) and physically recovering the kids involved is surely a better use of their time, right? Ideally they'd do both, but finite resources...

<comment><USER21> Chasing users is useful because those people are high-risk to be abusing children in their lives.

The government drones on and on about the dangers of "The dark web" and how we need to give up all our security (because if we don't, they can't possibly catch anyone).

Instead, we find hundreds of sites so easily accessible that a standard web crawler can locate them. It wouldn't be too difficult to track down the site and monitor it to find the owner. At that point, shut down the site and squeeze the owner. Sooner or later, one of them is going to have links to producers that can be followed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> >"Omegle for 12 years old" prompted Bing to suggest searching for "Kids On Omegle Showing",

Results called "kids on omegle showing" suggests that the kids were being prompted by predators to produce child pornography on social networks. There has got to be some rule about letting kids access these social networking platforms. Who could possibly think it's a good idea to let a child post their photos videos and profile information online and leave that open to the public for any predator who wants to reach out to them. And what's worse these kids are probably using these things unsupervised.

I wonder how a search company could hope to really effectively combat this content considering it's probably constantly being produced and circulated on a daily basis. Although one should expect them to keep track of and closely monitor keyword phrases routinely associated with child porn.

<comment><USER24> Omegle is more of a chat room than a social network. Users can video chat with random strangers. What I found odd is that Omegle video chat is moderated, probably to curb unwanted sexual content, but there are also two other video chat categories: adult, which allows sexual content, and unmoderated, which sounds like it has no systems in place to remove unwanted content like child pornography. It seems absurd to me to have an unmoderated category on top of an adult category - what legal things would you need an unmoderated video chat with strangers for?

The results for "kids on Omegle showing" are most likely other users who have captured screenshots or recordings of the illegal video streams on Omegle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wow. That must've been a pretty disgusting story to investigate. I heard people at Facebook that have to moderate this kind of stuff develop PTSD-like problems.

<comment><USER26> "That must've been a pretty disgusting story to investigate."

Please, this is limited to law enforcement. DO NOT TRY TO INVESTIGATE THIS yourself. Looking and finding CP could be considered a crime already in your jurisdiction.

<comment><USER27> At the same time, citizen investigations can be powerful things.

Investigating corporations for flippantly allowing child abuse materials to be indexed and distributed on their platforms should never be illegal. The fact that Israeli investigators did this research, rather than Americans (Google is an American company) shows that our own low enforcement clearly isn't doing it's job here.

I have a toolchain for finding child abuse content on Youtube, and I use it to report videos to Youtube for takedown. It's absolutely insane that I can be held criminally responsible for finding this content - but Youtube is immune from consequences hosting it.

Some of the videos I have found had millions of views.

Many that I have reported have not been taken down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is really surprising considering Microsoft owns PhotoDNA which is used all over the internet to detect child pornography.

<comment><USER29> I've heard rumors that PhotoDNA incentived the creation of new child pornography that ostensibly isn't in their database, rather than the traditional sharing of older images.

<comment><USER30> That's an interesting idea. I don't see how they would establish cause and effect, so I'm inclined to not believe it. But it is interesting to consider unexpected incentives.

<comment><USER29> I mean, the effects (your life being ruined forever if caught) isn't exactly amenable to the scientific process and fully establishing cause and effect. It's totally rational for them be extra cautious beyond what they can establish.

<comment><USER30> I meant, how would you prove that more was produced as a result? How do you know that now isn't produced because there are now people in the world in general? Or some other cause?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Duck Duck Go's suggestions for "omegle k" look like they are going to return awful results: [https://twitter.com/dwightknoll/status/1083440852993802243](https://twitter.com/dwightknoll/status/1083440852993802243)

<comment><USER32> DDG is using Bing though so not surprising.

<comment><USER31> Bing is a source, but it isn't just a passthrough [https://duck.co/forum/thread/4350/did-you-know-that- duckduck...](https://duck.co/forum/thread/4350/did-you-know-that-duckduckgo- bing)

<comment><USER33> Bing is the biggest source, they try hard to divert from this fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> They way this usually works is: a problem surfaces, a team is created that creates countermeasures, they measure the results, they solve it, then the metrics become part of a dashboard. They run against a wall improving the metrics, they move on, team funding is cut in half (or moved to another location, like india/china, with a junior team). Meanwhile adversaries find new ways to counter the measure. The article mentions several components of the stack, developed in different locations. I presume right now they have put up a tiger team to fix it. The cycle begins again...

<comment><USER35> Some of the search terms seemed like pretty low-hanging fruit. "Porn CP"? I thought that there was some kind of initiative to just show no results for CP- seeking queries, and that seems like one of the ones that would be pretty obvious to block. I wonder if we're not just seeing the result of a bug.

<comment><USER36> Google does that, some are obvious but even those that _seem_ obvious end up causing problems.

You can't use the word "minor" _at all_ in combination with some terms, even though it's a common last name.

I don't know what the answer is, but it seems like we should be able to do a much better job selectively returning results to "wall off" the things we want to separate and avoid accidentally letting through, rather than simplistically blocking words, which is clearly what's happening in some cases.

You don't necessarily have to identify every single image to know that certain terms should not be returning results from sites and pages that have a high probability of being porn, and certain NSFW terms should not be returning results from sites aimed at, or content known to have been made by, children.

Anecdotally it seems like all we've done is to edge closer to ruining search for legitimate situations without accomplishing much.

<comment><USER35> > I don't know what the answer is, but it seems like we should be able to do a > much better job selectively returning results to "wall off" the things we > want to separate and avoid accidentally letting through, rather than > simplistically blocking words, which is clearly what's happening in some > cases.

This is just defense in depth. If you know a query returns 90% CP before filtering, even if your filters are 99% sensitive, you're going to get some CP in the first few pages for that set of terms. So if you identify a query as CP-seeking, then you would rather probably just show nothing at all. Of course, the definition of CP-seeking would have to be tuned, but the ratio of legitimate to CP results would have to be a component of that.

> You don't necessarily have to identify every single image to know that > certain terms should not be returning results from sites and pages that have > a high probability of being porn

We definitely already do that, and have been doing at least since the late 2000s.

> Anecdotally it seems like all we've done is to edge closer to ruining search > for legitimate situations without accomplishing much.

Objectively, this is not true. We have accomplished a great deal in terms of CP suppression, and search is better than it ever has been for the vast majority of legitimate queries. Regardless, I'm sorry that you feel that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> You would think that people who have illegal content would try to hide it from a mainstream search engine? Aren't they just sitting ducks waiting for police to come arrest them? I thought this kind of thing was on the dark net, and there was no way to accidentally see it?

</comment><comment><USER38> The problem of this article is that it is untrue, and that because the material may not be viewed, almost nobody has any means to check that it is untrue.

Apart from incidents, which are probably removed very fast, there has not been and is there is no child pornography on Bing in the past year. It is true that the keyword recommendations are very disturbing. They probably reflect what other people have been searching for.

Source: I'm sexually attracted to (some) children, and I sometimes use Bing to search for legal photos of (naked) children, because I know that Bing uses PhotoDNA to filter out everything illegal. I have never seen any child pornography. There's only naturism without any sexual posing and models (woman) that might look 15-17 but are actually from legit porn sites.

You may think that's disgusting or immoral, and I can understand the disgusting part. I know that I'm sexually attracted to young boys since I was 15/16 years old, and I have decided to never act on that attraction. I have a stable relationship with another adult. However, viewing naturism photos of children is not illegal, and I don't think I harm anyone by viewing such photos.

I you want to have some information about pedophilia, as there are lots of myths about it, I think this is a good resource with linked sources: [https://pedofieltweets.wordpress.com/2018/12/30/pedophilia-e...](https://pedofieltweets.wordpress.com/2018/12/30/pedophilia- essential-facts) . Main point to take away, is that most abuse isn't committed by pedophiles, and that it is very likely that most pedophiles don't abuse children.

</comment><comment><USER39> Holy cow. Online search and big social media sound like a complete dystopia at this point. What's next?

<comment><USER40> News corporations. Oh wait, that's already a dystopia in the present.

'Tomorrow Never Dies' has really aged well...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow_Never_Dies#Reflective...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow_Never_Dies#Reflective_reviews)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> For the report embedded in the techcrunch article, I'm getting "This document has been removed from scribd" when attempting to view or download it. Why couldn't they just publish it as a PDF file on the techcrunch website?

</comment><comment><USER42> Without even reading the article, I know exactly what they are talking about. I completely stopped using Bing a few weeks ago after stumbling upon the search phrase "nude beach" with safe search turned off. Do not do this.

<comment><USER43> For some reason Bing is highly optimized for porn. There are a lot of memes that satirize about this.

I think this was a strategy to lure users from Google, which is very restrictive when it comes to indexing and showing sensitive content.

<comment><USER44> Can confirm, I use Bing only for porn, Google for everything else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Wow, Bing seems to be in a bad shape. Just a few months ago Bing was serving malware/adware disguised as a Google Chrome ad and now this.

<comment><USER46> To be fair, a link to real Google Chrome download is also serving malware/adware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Tangent: (I need to start making a note of the search terms I'm using when I notice this so I can get confirmation I'm not just ignorant of the relation, but) I'm often surprised by the number of suggestive images that show up in image results even with safe search selected. I usually use duckduckgo, but sometimes also google image search.

</comment><comment><USER47> Search is one of those businesses where just delivering a service that to most consumers seems to not change much from one year to the next actually requires a lot of work.

Actually improving noticebly requires an astonishing amount of work. Improving to the degree that users overcome their brand biases is harder still.

I don't envy Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER48> Two things:

one) Article should redact search terms if it is illegal to try them - <AUTHOR> can't even verify findings are real. Also, I predict a number of people (likely low but still a lot), searched the terms to verify.

two) A lot of pornographic websites will advertise "young", "girls", "teen", and maybe even "kid" but all persons will be of legal age, some though do dress/look much younger. A) Maybe the people doing the investigation can't tell / have poor judgement. B) How would Microsoft Bing know whether the young "stars" look young, or are actually young?

My vote would be to ban the whole damn search keywords altogether. Let investigator find and prosecute those in the darker corners of the web but just ban searches for keywords like those in the article.

</comment><comment><USER49> In my mind, Bing has two separate issues here:

1\. Not filtering out all child pornography images..

2\. Suggesting search terms relating to child pornography.

The second point is the most damning, in my opinion. Here's an example:

1\. Navigate to Bing Images.

2\. Turn off safe search.

3\. Search Bing images "sex"

4\. Click on the second image.

At the top of the image detail page, there will be suggested search terms. One of them, for me, is "baby sex fetish"

They seem to process each search result image, and suggest other search terms based on what they think the image contains. For example, if I search for "breast", and click on a NSFW picture containing smaller-chested model, I end up with suggestions like "Skinny Small Tit Girls Naked".

For what it's worth, Google doesn't provide suggestions for NSFW searches at all. I think this approach goes a long ways to solving this specific issue.

</comment><comment><USER50> Duckduckgo does this too. Rather than typing 'ne' to autocomplete this very site, I typed 'nn' once and there was child porn on duckduckgo's first page.

<comment><USER51> I've switched from Google to Duckduckgo for the majority of searches and found that using Duckduckgo's image search is too NSFW to be used at work.

One time I searched for a building called "Banana Alley" and was trying to find a photo of it to send to a friend. Google correctly returned a photo of the building, however Duckduckgo returned some "interesting things adults do with bananas".

I believe Google has a pre-processor to work out if you're searching for adult content first before deciding if to show adult content in the image results.

So if I search for random terms - Google will never show porn, unless I include sex-related terms in the search query. And only then will the NSFW filter be removed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> They also show beastiality if your search is about horses. D=

</comment><comment><USER53> Microsoft is, as the article points out, a multi-billion dollar company. Though they clearly have not invested enough effort into preventing this, they've almost certainly invested a great deal of effort. And it was still ineffective.

What does this mean for smaller companies that make products which index the open web? Put another way, does this stuff show up on Duck Duck Go?

</comment><comment><USER54> Is there a reason they don't run child exploitation detection ML engine (PhotoDNA) on the media they index? I'd guess they already run an ML engine to "describe" a image while they index it and this additional step shouldn't be too expensive?

<comment><USER55> What makes you think they don't, and what is found here is just the small portion that makes it past the filters?

<comment><USER31> Based on the redactions in the images in the article, those searches are returning ~75% cp. I guess that could still be a small portion of whats out there, but that's horrifying.

<comment><USER55> Hm. Here's my napkin math:

Porn accounts for 1% of images. Child porn accounts for 1 in a million fraction of that. So it's 10 per 1 billion images.

If you figure the filters exclude 90% of child porn images, that's 1 per billion which will show up in search results.

I can't find a good estimate of total number of images, but YouTube shows 5 billion videos a day and gets 1800 minutes of video per minute.

So if we estimate a trillion photos, then we'd expect around a thousand child porn images to make it past the filters, and Bing to be able to return a few pages of 75% child porn when we accidentally stumble on a term in that category.

<comment><USER31> Oh yeah, didn't think about the concentrating factor of the search term.

<comment><USER56> There's a slightly bizarre situation here where search algorithms are working against themselves, yeah. Presumably anything spiked by PhotoDNA isn't returned at all - which frees up those spots for the next-most-relevant result. And the more effective Bing's indexing is, well, the worse that result will be...

Since PhotoDNA is basically a known-bad tool, it presumably can't win the battle unless turnover is fairly low. Penalizing or hiding sites with many PhotoDNA hits (or perhaps a high percentage of hits) might do better by targeting concentrators, but that would depend on what sort of sites are serving this stuff. I assume they have to be fairly small/scattered to stay operational, which in turn makes it harder to predict what sort of content they have.

(And despite the article, it doesn't seem clear that Google _has_ solved this problem, so much as bypassed it with a whitelist approach to nudity in general.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Is there a reason not block the engine from returning image results or suggesting related results based on the search terms? I realize that's probably naive but seems less difficult than starting by trying to classify the images.

</comment><comment><USER58> Naive thought/question: if CP becomes easily accessible for free through search engines, won't that cause less CP to be produced, since the producers will be less able to make money from it?

So maybe that's not all bad?

<comment><USER59> Jevons paradox states that increases in production usually cause an increase in demand, and there might be similar effects here: The availability might make it more socially acceptable, which in turn might increase the demand, and therefore also the demand of original productions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Seems Microsoft already have the technology: [https://www.how- old.net](https://www.how-old.net)

</comment><comment><USER61> Someday hopefully soon, computer vision will be able to more immediately identify these perverts the moment it hits any open peer network.

</comment><comment><USER62> thanks for the warning at the top. it is so tempting to reproduce the search results.

</comment><comment><USER63> Also consider how many things Bing ties into, like Windows. Oh shit.

</comment><comment><USER64> techcrunch.com not only reports on child pornography, it suggests how to get it.

</comment><comment><USER65> This is probably automated keyword suggestions... what the the police need to do is go after the source of the problem (take down and prosecute the ones hosting these files).

<comment><USER66> While this makes totally sense, it is just a part of solving this problem. Often, those files are hosted on foreign servers with next to no chance for law enforcement to get access and take those servers down. A filter will definitly help with the spread of these atrocitys, this also protects the dignity of the victims.

Google does not show these search results so it must be entirely possible to filter them out. Why can't MS do the same thing for Bing?

<comment><USER65> we have seen the fbi blocking content that was hosted in other countries... why put every and all companies in charge of policing? is law enforcement too lazy?

<comment><USER66> Because _Microsoft_ is sourcing and indexing these images, not the FBI or the general society. Going from there, i think it is entirely reasonable to see the responsibility with Microsoft.

<comment><USER65> I think it is a good thing to have a search engine that indexes everything... it makes it easier for cops to do their job...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I stopped using Bing to search for porn specifically because the recommendations were creeping me the fuck out.

I remember searching for something like "Blowjob Cumshot", and that recommendation bar started giving me options for "Preteen Blowjob Cumshot", "Middle School Blowjob Cumshot", and "Little Girl Blowjob Cumshot".

All of the thumbnails for these buttons were clearly lolicon/hentai, but it blew my mind that Bing was actually suggesting these search terms as alternatives to mine...

This was years ago, so it blows my mind that this is still a fucking problem...

</comment><comment><USER67> Microsoft could outsource the censorship to Beyondsoft. They do much of the Internet censorship for the government of China.[1]

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/02/business/china- internet-c...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/02/business/china-internet- censor.html)

</comment><comment><USER68> It still rubs me the wrong way that simple possession of child pornography is illegal. It's obviously a good idea to criminalize production of child pornography, and possibly the sale of as well, assuming that sales of child porn incentivize production of it, but images and video do not actually harm any children, meaning criminalizing possession does nothing, and is in fact an example of censorious and moralistic government overreach.

Consider that it is perfectly legal to watch cartel or ISIS execution videos, and that the acts depicted in such videos are far worse than child rape. You disagree? Are you saying you would rather be flayed alive than be retroactively raped as a child and live with the trauma of it? Under what principle does it make sense that possession of gore videos is legal, and possession of child pornography is not?

<comment><USER69> Ethics aside.

>but images and video do not actually harm any children

Yes, they are. In the creation of that video, a child was harmed. Criminalizing the consumption of a good is aimed at stemming the production of a good.

<comment><USER70> There's also some nice secondary effects of criminalizing possession of child pornography. What little evidence we have about pedophiles suggests that the majority of consumers of child porn have also sexually abused children personally. And, while child sexual abuse tends to go un-reported and can be difficult to prove in court (usually the child is the only witness, limited physical evidence, etc.) possession of child porn is much easier to get a conviction on. So not only is criminalization stemming the production of child porn, it is helping to find and convict sexual abusers.

<comment><USER71> > What little evidence we have about pedophiles suggests that the majority of > consumers of child porn have also sexually abused children personally.

That's not true at all.

<comment><USER70> I over-stated the evidence. I was thinking of a study claiming 85% of felons convicted of child porn possession also admitted to also committing child sexual abuse in anonymous reporting. But it seems there's a lot of controversy around that study: [https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/19/us/19sex.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/19/us/19sex.html) .

That said, my understanding is the evidence does seem to indicate a correlation between the two, though in the 30-40% range. See [https://web.archive.org/web/20080111204617/http://www.ndaa.o...](https://web.archive.org/web/20080111204617/http://www.ndaa.org/publications/newsletters/child_sexual_exploitation_update_volume_1_number_3_2004.html) for example. Not a majority, but still significant. And, of course, this sample is just people who were convicted of possession, not all people who ever viewed such material, so I'd have to qualify my statement to "convicted consumers of child porn"

<comment><USER71> I agree with this post. Lots of people viewing images of child sexual abuse will go on to commit a contact offence (or already have committed a contact offence).

But there are plenty of people who won't go on to commit a contact offence.

This is a problem for law enforcement because they need to monitor all people who've viewed images of child sexual abuse in order to stop them committing contact offences, and this second group inflates the numbers. Maybe it's only 20% more, but maybe it more than doubles the numbers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> nv-vn Who was the guy who found this and why the fuck was he searching "porn kids" and "omegle kids showing"? Like I get that it's an issue and all but this dude was looking up really sketchy shit that you wouldn't just stumble upon by accident.

<comment><USER72> "It's ok officer, I'm a journalist!"

<comment><USER73> It worked for Pete Townshend.</comment></comment></comment>


Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit) - <AUTHOR> Hi HN! We're the founders of the Centre for Effective Altruism, a nonprofit from Oxford, UK in the YC W17 batch. We're the creators of Effective Altruism (EA) Funds, (https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/) high-impact, individual giving portfolios, managed by expert researchers. It's like Vanguard for charity.
We created EA Funds because we became frustrated with how difficult it was to find the best giving opportunities as an individual donor. Using EA Funds, you choose a problem area, and our fund managers find the best giving opportunities. Our initial funds are all managed by Program Officers at the Open Philanthropy Project, a $10B private foundation. In the future, we hope to expand the number of funds, building a competitive marketplace for giving, where the amount of funding a charity receives is directly correlated with the amount of good they do.
We started out 7 years ago, when 23 of our friends pledged to give 10% of their income to the most effective charities they could find. Since then, 2700 people have joined us, donating $33M, including $17M last year. We've found that some of the most cost-effective charities can buy one year of perfect health (a DALY) for as little as $80, while others have no effect. A study in the US found that $10B was spent each year on social programs that had been proven to have no effect on outcomes, and a further $1B was spent on programs that were actively harmful. We built EA Funds to replicate the success of groups like the Gates Foundation and GiveWell. By pooling our resources and utilising the expertise of our research community, we can give individual donors the same impact per dollar as billion dollar foundations.
We'd love to hear your feedback and answer questions about effective altruism, donating effectively or hear your stories about the charity sector!
(Edit: originally said QALY instead of DALY, but that was a typo, as commenters pointed out.) <comment><USER2> Congrats on the launch!

> We've found that some of the most cost-effective charities can buy one year > of perfect health (a QALY) for as little as $80

Which was that? IIRC GiveWell only claim $100/QALY for the AMF - have you found a charity you believe is 20% more efficient than that, or is this just a difference in how you measure cost per qaly?

[Edit] another question -- there's recently been criticism[0] of the poor quality of data and effectiveness research in animal welfare EA, compared with human welfare EA. Would the animal welfare fund be doing things like actively commissioning new research into intervention effectiveness? Or would it be more hands-off, just limited to picking charities based on the data that's out there at the moment?

[0] [https://medium.com/@harrisonnathan/the-actual-number-is- almo...](https://medium.com/@harrisonnathan/the-actual-number-is-almost- surely-higher-92c908f36517#.jgeac5y3n)

<comment><USER3> It's just that it's an estimate that hinges on a few judgement calls (e.g. whether or not to cost services that AMF receive pro bono) — we're in agreement with Givewell's estimate. For comparison, the WHO think that LLINs work out to be around ~$30/DALY and AMF run a pretty tight ship.

Given the tricky nature of cost-effectiveness estimates I don't think the numbers are hard enough that it'd be wise to talk about the difference implying anything as exact as an intervention being '20% more efficient'. It's more to get a reasonable ballpark for comparisons between other interventions.

(Also, seems there was a typo in the OP, should be DALY not QALY).

<comment><USER4> QALY and DALY are different.

[http://www.qalibra.eu/tool/support/page8.cfm](http://www.qalibra.eu/tool/support/page8.cfm)

<comment><USER5> .. which doesn't preclude someone having typoed one for the other, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is really interesting and a great idea; however, I'd almost trust charities more if they listed how they had failed each year and where delivery and services went wrong and what mitigation has been put in place.

It would be good to have a system where charities were allowed to fail like bad companies as well, but it's difficult to be this honest.

<comment><USER7> The charities themselves rarely do that directly (unfortunately, as the OP said, the incentives are really messed-up so they would never do so), but GiveWell does it "by proxy" every year, so if you donate to GiveWell's "general fund" you can be sure that they're iterating and correcting for failures.

In terms of other feedback, I have to say I really like the clean separation of "ends" and how you can pick which one(s) you want. TBH, I've been getting increasingly annoyed at how the X-risk people are gradually taking over EA, but I don't want to just quit or blow up at them either (they mean well even if I think they're misguided). This looks like a way that everyone can be happy. Please don't let them needle you into adding that stuff into the Global Development or Animal Welfare funds.

<comment><USER8> I agree with you about X-risk, but I'm not sure the separation is so clean. For example looking at the EA Community fund page it isn't at all clear to me whether or not some of the money will end up in the hands of the AI Safety people. To be fair this is openly disclosed as a risk, which is great transparency.

 _Second, donors may choose not to support the Movement Building Fund if they do not wish to indirectly support all of the problem areas that the EA community is likely to support. This includes areas like Global Health and Development, Animal Welfare, Long-Term Future, and any future problem areas that the community deems effective to address. For example, Dylan Matthews criticized the EA community in 2015 for being overly self-promoting and overly concerned about risks from advanced artificial intelligence (one response to this criticism here). Those with strong views about which problem areas they do not wish to support might avoid movement building as a result._

However, admirable transparency or not, the only fund I'd really be interested in allocating money to would be the Global Health and Development Fund. Given that, for me personally, the paragraphs about differentiating vs GiveWell are critical.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's really great to hear this view. While lots of donors split their donation between our funds, many people choose to allocate 100% of their donation to a single fund. At a later date, we want to allow people to share their fund allocations, so donors can compare allocations and discuss differences in cause prioritization.

Right now, our Global Health and Development Fund has 61% of all donations by value, with the Long-Term future fund coming in at 22%. It will be exciting to see how this changes over time, and whether there are differences in fund allocation by geographic area or demographics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Since Givewell has come up a number of times here, the obvious question to me, as someone completely unversed in how these things work, is how does contributing to your fund compare to contributing to Givewell? It seems like your goals are similar. Is your claim that dollars contributed to your fund will ultimately be _more_ effective? Or are you differentiating yourselves in a different way (different priorities, improved transparancy, something else)? I realize the model is somewhat different, but the comparison I would ultimately care about is in the end results - the effects that my contributions would ultimately have.

<comment><USER3> Our baseline for effectiveness (specifically with regard to the Global Health and Development Fund, which is managed by GiveWell founder Elie Hassenfeld) is Givewell's top charities. So, it's entirely possible that Elie will choose to grant to these, in which case your donation will be exactly as effective as donating to Givewell, but you'll get the advantage of using the EA Funds platform — e.g. single tax receipt (donating to one org instead of 3-4), easy recurring donations, the ability to change your donation preferences later, allocating to causes outside of global health, donation tracking etc. etc.

However, we do think there's a good chance of getting higher returns. Givewell recommendations skew towards what makes sense for an average, individual donor with a particular risk profile. By having access to a larger pool of funds, you could seed new high-expected-value charities that wouldn't necessarily make it onto Givewell's recommendation list, but are nonetheless potentially high impact (examples of recent things in this space — New Incentives, Charity Science Health etc).

<comment><USER10>
        single tax receipt (donating to one org instead of 3-4)

GiveWell offers this as well: [https://secure.givewell.org/](https://secure.givewell.org/)

You can donate to GiveWell for distribution to their to charities, and you can either choose the breakdown or ask them to allocate it as they think best.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's true. You can donate to GiveWell's top charities directly through GiveWell. For many donors, especially those who only want to donate to proven charities with a good track record, this is a great choice.

With our Global Health and Development Fund, we hope to also make small, seed grants to promising new initiatives, to help them build evidence to support their program, or to replicate a promising intervention in a new geographic region, to figure out if the program can scale. Many of these donation opportunities are small, and individual donors won't necessarily hear about them. With Elie managing this fund, we hope to be able to quickly fund promising new projects, so they spend less time on PR and fundraising, and more time doing good work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why is there a "long term future" fund addressing the theoretical risk of AI but not the very well understood and documented future risks of climate change?

<comment><AUTHOR> The Long-Term future fund is designed to be fairly broad at some point, and it may well support some climate change initiatives in the future, as well as addressing potential risks from advanced artificial intelligence, and any other potential global catastrophic risks. Nick Beckstead has previously expressed interest in funding more research to quantify the tail risks associated with runaway climate change in particular.

Having said that, one of the reasons that EA has not focused as heavily on climate change historically is that climate change is not as neglected as potential risks from AI, or biotechnology. We are happy to see a lot of funding going into climate research and modelling, and a lot of grassroots activism. While climate change is far from solved, and remains one of the most important problems of our time, many EAs think that we should first focus on problems which receive less media attention but are plausibly just as serious.

<comment><USER12> To add some numbers to this, according to [http://www.climatefinancelandscape.org/](http://www.climatefinancelandscape.org/) $392 billion was spent on various aspects of tackling climate change in 2014. In contrast, under $10 million per year is being spent on potential risks from AI ([https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/artificial- intellige...](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/artificial-intelligence- risk/)).

That doesn't mean there's nothing neglected in climate change (e.g. negative emissions technology) and it would be good to see some more investigation into this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I disagree with just maximizing QALYs as the main measure of effective altruism. See my post:

[http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=216](http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=216)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thanks for your post. I think that many EAs would agree with you here. Effective Altruism is not just about maximizing QALYs. It's about figuring out what doing good even means, figuring out how to improve the world, and then actually doing it. We're not just about educating people on one narrow conception of what doing good means, we know that doing good is hard and complex, so we're trying to build a community of people focused on figuring that out. Our community debates what it means to do the most good endlessly, and there is a lot of nuance, that's what we love about it! You mentioned some interesting issues in population ethics in your post, it appears you take the person-affecting view. Many EAs who take this view prefer to support global health, or animal welfare charities, as they do not think it is beneficial to maximise the number of happy people in the world. Other people in our community think that a world with more people is better, provided that adding more people does not reduce the overall total happiness. In our summary of the Long-Term future Fund, you can read Nick's take on the person-affecting view[0] and see some more links to discussion of this issue. We love getting into these debates and seeing lots of different perspectives. [0] [https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/far- future](https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/far-future)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Congrats on your venture!

Will you give more detail on how you address the following four steps mentioned in your website:

1\. Which problem areas are most important?

Metrics used for each fund (DALYs, etc.)? Sources used? etc.

2\. Which interventions are likely to make progress in solving the problem?

Sources used? How do you evaluate interventions with less predictable outcomes (such as clean energy research)? etc.

3\. Which charities executing those interventions are most effective?

Indicators used? Type of due diligence? Do you rely only on reports or do you also regularly check on-the-ground reality? etc.

4\. Which charities have a funding gap that is unlikely to be filled elsewhere?

Methodology (funding inflow/outflow models and/or constant dialogue with organisations ...)?

Again, really great initiative; would be interested to understand more in detail.

<comment><USER15> Thanks for the enthusiasm!

I think a lot of your questions can be answered here (including the other pages that these pages link to): [http://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/our- process](http://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/our-process) and [http://www.givewell.org/how-we-work/process](http://www.givewell.org/how-we- work/process)

Because our fund managers are all GiveWell and Open Philanthropy staff, we inherit their methodology. If in the future we move beyond GiveWell and Open Philanthropy fund managers, we'll need to have pages on their process too (and how it potentially differs from GW / OP).

A more accessible introduction to how to assess which problem area is most important is here: [https://80000hours.org/career-guide/most-pressing- problems/](https://80000hours.org/career-guide/most-pressing-problems/)

<comment><USER3> I'd add that these things will differ between cause areas, so it's hard to give a neat, roll-up answer. DALY's and NPV income estimates are fairly good in the global health space, but other cause areas may need to make more speculative comparisons because they deal with things that are harder to measure.

In all cases, when a Fund makes a grant, the fund manager will provide a write-up outlining their rationale. For now, each fund manager has a list of previous grants they've made, so you can get a sense of the organisations they are likely to grant to (though by no means does that imply that they necessarily /will/ grant to these specific orgs in future).

One of the key advantages of the Funds model is not locking you in to a particular charity up front, which means that as more information about funding gaps, intervention effectiveness etc comes to light, fund managers can respond accordingly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hi Tara, great work on the fund - and I'm a big fan of EA / GiveWell / Doing Good Better and all this "ecosystem". I'm curious about the scalability of EA funds. From what I know, some of the major areas that EA and GiveWell focus on are neglected causes. If enough people are giving to neglected causes, would the movement lose its essence?

Also, individual donors in general are impact givers who make a donation because their friends told them about a non-profit, or they paid for a gala- dinner ticket for social reasons. How do you plan to transform the general public from being impulse givers into "effective altruists" ?

</comment><comment><USER17> Congrats!

My genuine feeling - I'm not helping children in Africa, because that would mean I'm not helping rebuild Nepal earthquake.

Instead I'm focusing on healing the planet - global warming - leading to famine, migration to cities, civil warfare, refugee crisis etc...

Oxford, UK - come to North Wales - [https://astralship.org](https://astralship.org) \- read more about our MISSION + FLOW + VOYAGES... Because our chapel is located in the secluded nature we plan intense voyages - total immersion, no distractions, peak performance, flow state.

Looking forward to hearing from you. Namaste.

</comment><comment><USER18> Great idea and I wish you all the best.

Assuming this becomes very successful, what effect will this have on new non- profits if most people adopt this approach? Will it make it difficult for them to raise funds?

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Ideally this makes it significantly easier for effective non-profits to raise money. We're not locking in the set of organizations we fund. Being flexible about which cause you support at any given time, given the available facts is a core part of effective altruism.

We're especially excited about funding new nonprofits that seem like they're going to be able to have a big impact, because at the moment they can spend north of 30-40% of their time fundraising (which, especially when they're new, would be time better spent on validating their programs and scaling up).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Caveat: I know little about this area, so my question may be rooted in naivete.

Q: Why are you operating as a nonprofit? I would be willing to pay a reasonable management fee to you in exchange for the assurance that my money will likely have a greater social impact. If you were able to charge management fees, wouldn't that give you a greater ability to grow and attract talent?

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, this is what the YC partners ask us as well!

We see this service as a public good, we want anyone to be able to donate effectively, no matter whether they are donating $10 or $10 million. We prefer to offer our service completely free of charge, but let people optionally tip us, or donate to us directly, if they find the work we do valuable. Right now, we have sufficient funding for our operations to support us until the end of the year, this will let us grow and attract top talent. If this product really does take off, we might play around with different funding models, including asking for an optional 'tip'.

As well as building EA Funds, we run local Effective Altruism community groups and conferences. Many of our members give back to us to support our activities because historically, we've been able to generate returns on their donation of between $10 and $100 for every dollar we spend on our operations. I should also note that there is some chance that donations to the EA Community Fund may be regranted to us if Nick Beckstead decides that we are a good giving opportunity. One way to support us it to allocate some of your donation to the EA Community Fund. We like this funding model because it incentivises us to focus on high impact activities. If the community evaluates the work we do positively, we'll get funding, and if not, we'll be forced to reassess our priorities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Congratulations on your launch! Well done. A great idea that needed to happen. Looking forward to kicking the tires on it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, please do let us know if you spot any issues, want to suggest any new features or have any other feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> \+ 1000 For the animals welfare. The animals that can't blog, tweet, or complain. Wildlife preservation and care for animals is as important as other common non-profit and foundations goals, but often neglected

<comment><USER22> Actually, most "effective altruists" support habitat destruction because it reduces the number of animals, and therefore also the amount of suffering.

I find this very disturbing. If you want details, see my other comment on this item: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13886954](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13886954)

Of course, EAs won't tell you this up front, as they know it would be bad PR. (cf. [https://medium.com/@jacobfunnell/a-year-in-effective- altruis...](https://medium.com/@jacobfunnell/a-year-in-effective-altruism- observations-and-criticisms-and-tofu-d6af9f7ecb39): "Some effective altruists hold views that would be strongly controversial to most people outside of EA. EA does a pretty good job of either not mentioning (or actively avoiding) these conclusions in its public-facing literature. Examples include the moral imperative to destroy habitat in order to reduce wild animal suffering, the need to divert funds away from causes like poverty relief and towards artificial intelligence safety research, or the extreme triviality of aesthetic value.")

<comment><USER3> While there are people who identify as effective altruist who hold views that are controversial, I think it's important to not paint with such a broad brush. As your linked article notes, there is wide disagreement on a range of thorny philosophical issues across a range of cause areas, but the scare quotes/selective quoting makes it seem like these views are unquestioningly accepted by a plurality of people in the community.

Effective altruism is a broad church. The unifying themes are trying to make the world a better place, using reason and evidence as tools for making decision, expanding our circle of compassion, and having epistemic humility (i.e. knowing that we could be wrong about things and being open to changing our minds in proportion to the strength of new evidence). The conclusions people draw can hinge on deep and ultimately irreducible value judgements — a strength of the community is that we can (in general) have these disagreements respectfully and work together productively where there is common ground.

<comment><USER22> Thank you for the response and I'm sorry for the tone of my earlier comment.

> As your linked article notes, there is wide disagreement on a range of > thorny philosophical issues across a range of cause areas, but the scare > quotes/selective quoting makes it seem like these views are unquestioningly > accepted by a plurality of people in the community.

There is disagreement within the EA community on ethics. However, almost all the disagreements are between different 'denominations' within the church of consequentialism -- questions like population ethics (total vs. person- affecting vs. negative), theories of well-being (hedonistic vs. preference), and distributional justice (utilitarian vs. prioritarian). The fundamental theory of consequentialism is taken for granted by most EAs. As my linked article says, "ultimately, only people who have a good majority of utilitarians in their moral parliaments are going to be able to get on-board with EA." I think this is true to some extent. While there are non- consequentialist EAs, it's hard to deny that the culture of EA is extremely consequentialist.

Even though I like the abstract idea of effective altruism, my value disagreements make me hesitant to trust certain EA organizations. I'm personally a deontological vegan and very concerned about animals, but if I donate to ACE (see section 7 of [https://medium.com/@harrisonnathan/the- actual-number-is-almo...](https://medium.com/@harrisonnathan/the-actual- number-is-almost-surely-higher-92c908f36517)) or the CEA Animal Welfare fund, how do I know the money won't go to something I ethically oppose (like pro- habitat destruction advocacy)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Just to add my $0.02, my impression is that while many EAs enjoy discussing the thorny philosophical issues like whether we should be concerned about insect-suffering, or wild-animal suffering, very few would advocate that we actually support habitat destruction or massive interventions in nature. Even groups like FRI, who are heavily focused on suffering, promote the idea of moral uncertainty. They believe that we should avoid drastic actions based on a narrow ethical view, due to uncertainty about which ethical views are more valid.

Like with everything, more controversial issues are more likely to be picked up by the media and blown out of proportion, relative to the actual level of support they receive. I would be extremely surprised if any money from the CEA Animal Welfare Fund went to support habitat destruction to reduce wild-animal suffering. I would be less surprised if money from the fund went to support research into animal consciousness, to help us better compare different types of animal welfare interventions.

<comment><USER23> I'm not from the media and I am campaigning against "effective altruism" because it promotes eco-terrorism, habitat destruction, call it what you want. I am compelled to do this to protect public safety.

There's no point in denying that a large portion of self-identified EAs are for eco-terrorism, it's all over the internet. There is no gray area here, you are either with the terrorists (strong negative utilitarians) are against them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What's the process to propose a charitable organization for inclusion in one of your funds? Who would be the right person at CEA to talk to about that, and what information would you need?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thanks for your interest!

Our fund managers work at the Open Philanthropy project, where they work full- time, finding the very best donation opportunities. They look for charities working in their key focus areas, which have a good track record and a robust evidence base to support their chosen intervention. If the program you'd like to recommend is within one of their key focus areas, run some quick calculations to check if the charity you'd like to recommend is within the same range of cost-effectiveness as the previous grantees. If so - great! we'd love to hear about it, and I'd recommend you get in touch with the program officer in charge of the program area your non-profit targets. We recommend running this quick test because while many non-profit programs have a plausible story for impact, very few non-profits surpass our stringent bar for effectiveness.

GiveWell is especially excited to see non-profits working on these intervention areas [http://blog.givewell.org/2015/10/15/charities-wed-like-to- se...](http://blog.givewell.org/2015/10/15/charities-wed-like-to-see/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Oh boy! I'm going to say some unpopular things here, so please remember you asked for feedback.

I immediately click on Funds->Animal Welfare since my company, Pembient, deals in wildlife and I've had a lot of (negative) interactions with the conservation industry. I see that the fund targets "farmed animals" and even then carries a warning:

"Risk-averse donors might choose not to focus on animal welfare because the evidence base for the most effective interventions is not yet as strong as in areas like global health and development."

Excellent! But then I look at the manager's background. It seems he has extensive dealings with The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). Further, at least one of the grants from the fund goes towards a HSUS project on broiler chicken welfare. OK, that's fine; however, digging deeper I find that at least 5% of the grant covers administrative costs (i.e., $50k). Now, money being fungible, that means money has been freed up for other activities. From my perspective, that would include HSUS's interference in The Black Rhino Genome Project:

[https://experiment.com/u/yHldOQ](https://experiment.com/u/yHldOQ)

And that's the problem with donating to large non-profits! They have so much going on that it is hard to track all the externalities.

Let me add that this issue, to me, is the biggest problem with Effective Altruism (EA). It says, "You're 'smart,' go out and become a wealthy hedge fund manager. That's the best use of your time, and then donate the proceeds to things that matter." I would counter and say that if you're truly 'smart,' you should be directly working on problems that matter. Doing something ancillary and then giving to a group of people who might be viewed as less 'smart' because they didn't follow the EA path is internally inconsistent. I think it reveals what EA is: A moral salve to justify forgoing work on hard problems to accumulate wealth for selfish purposes. Not that there is anything wrong with that per se, I just don't like the marketing on top of it.

I said I would be harsh. Apologies, if I've been too harsh.

<comment><USER9> Do you think that rather than considering smartness as a linear scale, it might make more sense to consider different people as having aptitudes in different areas? I could see one person being an excellent and effective animal welfare activist and another being a top performing hedge fund manager; it's unlikely the two could switch roles and perform equally well.

Regarding HSUS, I'm not sufficiently well versed to have an opinion there, but it is theoretically possible for an organization to do things you don't like, but still be more of a net positive than the available alternatives, especially when the bulk of the donation will go toward a specific initiative. Maybe they believe that's the case here?

<comment><AUTHOR> We do need many more talented people to found and work for effective non- profits. At CEA, we've found it hard to hire extremely talented people, as many of the people we want to hire want to continue donating instead! Non- profits often find it hard to attract top talent, in part because they tend to pay lower salaries, working at a non-profit is less prestigious, and because talented people tend to want to work with other talented people. We have been impressed with Y Combinator's approach here, they're trying to incentivize talented people to found really effective non-profits, and then help them scale. We're hoping that if donors are willing to fund these new promising projects, many more people will be drawn to the non-profit world. On the other hand, just like founding a company is not for everyone, neither is working at a non-profit. We should each consider our comparative advantage. As tempestn mentioned, some people might be extremely good at their day-job and be well compensated for it, but might not necessarily make excellent activists. In that case, that person might be able to help the causes they care about most by donating to effective charities. We need all kinds of people!

<comment><USER26> Is there an EA job board somewhere? Maybe people aren't interested due to pay, but I doubt many people are aware the jobs exist in the first place. I was under the impression it was a small pool of applicants but a much smaller pool of job openings.

<comment><AUTHOR> 80,000 Hours has a very simple job board ([https://80000hours.org/job- board/](https://80000hours.org/job-board/))

While there aren't many job openings posted, many effective organizations are often open to hiring talented individuals at other times throughout the year. It's definitely worth dropping organizations a quick email to let them know you're interested in future opportunities. If any of you are interested in working at CEA in the future, head to our website and ask to be added to our recruitment email list. We'll be hiring for 4-6 positions later in the year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What's the overhead? What are the management fees?

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't charge any management fees, you can donate through EA funds, and we'll pass on 100% of the money we receive to the charities.

We don't consider a charities' overhead when evaluating effectiveness, in the same way that you don't consider how much Tim Cook gets paid when you decide whether to buy an iPhone. Historically, groups like Charity Navigator have looked at overhead ratios for one simple reason - they're much easier to measure. Unfortunately, overhead ratios are simply not a useful measure for evaluating charity effectiveness, and they are easily gamed by unscrupulous charities trying to raise funding. Instead, we look at the total costs a charity incurs, and add in any costs that they don't include in their budget, but are necessary to deliver their program. Then we look at the outcomes the charity achieves for that funding as a whole. I'd check out Dan Pallotta's TED talk if you want to know more the overhead myth. [https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_abou...](https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dead_wrong)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Would YC fund a centre for egoism, for-profit?

</comment><comment><USER22> Why does CEA openly support the Foundational Research Institute even though their fringe negative utilitarian value system is dangerous?</comment>


Paul Krugman wins economics Nobel prize - <AUTHOR> http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/paul-krugman-wins-economics-nobel/?hp <comment><USER2> To those people wondering about the influence of politics on Krugman's prize:

(1) Krugman won the John Bates Clark Medal for economics in 1991. This is a Prize given every two years to an American Economist under 40. It's often considered harder to win than the economics Nobel, and is a significant predictor of who actually will win the Nobel. Note that this was largely before Krugman got involved in politics, and past winners include Milton Friedman. I doubt his politics helped him win this one.

(2) By most measures of citation impact, Krugman is one of the world's leading economists. E.g., <http://ideas.repec.org/top/top.person.nbcites.html>

Citations are, of course, an imperfect predictor of the significance of someone's work, this is just an additional data point.

I doubt his involvement in US politics had much impact on the prize.

<comment><USER3> His involvement in politics is largely limited to the past several years. His main contributions to economics, arguably, have come far before that.

He's the author of the foremost textbook on international trade (Krugman+Obstfield), and developed models of international trade that every economics major knows (or should, at least).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anyone here who hasn't read Krugman's paper on the economics of interstellar trade owes it to themselves to do so:

<http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/interstellar.pdf>

I've never laughed so hard that coffee went up my nose while reading an econ paper prior to coming across this one. (Okay, and maybe the first version of the Paulson bailout, but that was a very different sort of laughter.)

<comment><USER5> This is GOLD.

"First Fundamental Theorem of Interstellar Trade: When trade takes place between two planets in a common inertial frame, the interest costs on goods in transit should be calculated using time measured by clocks in the common frame, and not by clocks in the frames of trading spacecraft."

and the final line for the kicker:

"Those of us working in this field are still a small band, but we know that the Force is with us."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you've followed Krugman for long, you've seen this coming for quite a while. The possibility of his winning an economics Nobel have been rumored for years. The interesting thing to me is that, when reading his columns, I often get the sense that Krugman doesn't really _believe_ in economics. He talks a good economics talk, but he hasn't internalized its lessons. He's like a brilliant Christian apologist who doesn't believe in Christ.

<comment><USER6> s/have been/has been

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I had the opportunity to hear Krugman speak in 2004 before the election. What I found surprising was how much he seemed to value his column. It certainly seemed like he thought it was much more important than his academic work.

<comment><USER8> I think it's extremely important to have academics in constant communication with the public. Keeps them grounded and their language plain, while the public can continue to engage with academics long after they've graduated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is a different strand of criticism of Krugman (and the neo-Keynesians in general) that is quite apart from his politics. At some level, this is a criticism of the modern economic profession itself, and its worship of mathematical models. This is conceptually analogous to but quite distinct from the Wall Street addiction to quantitative/stochastic modeling, which is behind much of the present mess. Krugman represents the pinnacle of that mathematical tradition. To be fair, Milton Friedman, ideologically the polar opposite of Krugman, has also faced similar criticism.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have long admired Krugman's analysis. I haven't read his academic work on economics of scale but if it is of the same quality as his articles, the nobel prize is well deserved.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's funny, I remember someone saying "If Paul Krugman hadn't started spewing about politics in the NY Times, he probably would've won the Nobel Prize." Looks like he won it anyway...

<comment><USER12> Since some of the folks who decide the Nobel winners have been quoted that other decisions were made as a "kick in the leg" at the Bush administration, Krugman's political columns probably helped him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find it despicable that people are burning other people's karma for simply voicing their opinions on a freakin' message board.

</comment><comment><USER14> "I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize."

</comment><comment><USER15> 1) He didn't win a Nobel prize; it's actually the Sveriges Riksbank Prize [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_in_Economics#Relati...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_in_Economics#Relation_to_the_Nobel_Prize)

2) As someone who advocated the flawed (and now admittedly failed) bailout scam, I'd have to question this

<comment><USER16> We don't know whether the bailout plan has failed yet. Calling it a scam is certainly premature.

<comment><USER15> Not really. I call it a scam because it's not limited to just 700 billion. It's an unlimited raid on the treasury, and even the modified plan still doesn't have enough transparency. It gives the executive branch even more power.

To me this is just politics, since the prize was awarded by one of the central banks to someone strongly advocating their policies...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> i love paul krugman. completely logical , insightful, and comprehendable

</comment><comment><USER18> Left-leaning columnist and economist wins Nobel?

Doesn't seem very surprising to me given the history of the Nobel committee in the soft sciences and humanities. It will be interesting to see how history views Krugman's accomplishments. I know some of their laureates, like Arafat, didn't hold up so well.

<comment><USER19> Krugman is much, much more than a liberal columnist. He got the column because, unlike most pundits, he has a long track record of interesting work in his field, and, unlike most eggheads, a knack for and interest in explaining those issues to the public. If you're reading him only via links from redstate.com or whatever, you're very much missing the point.

And when did Yasir Arafat win the Nobel prize in Economics? You do realize that the selection committees are entirely different organizations, right? Must _everything_ be a political swipe at conservatives? Isn't it possible that every once in a while one of those lib'ruls might actually produce something useful and be rewarded for it?

<comment><USER18> Just waitin' on history to tell. You can return to your ranting now.

<comment><USER20> Why are we talking about leftists and economics and stuff in this thread?

Oh, right - it's completely off topic argument bait.

Here's a libertarian economist on some of Krugman's work:

[http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2008/10/pauls_nobel_nic....](http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2008/10/pauls_nobel_nic.html)

As a non-economist, one of the ways that I look at their work is to observe when they go 'against the grain' politically: when the left-wing ones argue for free markets, and when the right wing ones argue for intervention.

<comment><USER18> I'm going to attempt rational discourse. So far you guys don't seem to like it so much.

I'm not an economist. I don't read the guy. I'm sure he's the bees knees and the next best thing to sliced bread.

I simply make the observation that the word is out that the Noble prize is a little myoptic. I've also heard that Krugman has become a reliable shill for the left. So when I heard he got the prize, I laughed. It seemed funny to me.

Maybe I'm completely wrong. Glad to admit it. Let's let history be the judge. Or -- you can accuse me of trolling and downmod the crap out of my comments. I'm not looking for an argument. If you can understand that, we can talk reasonably. If not -- well, you always have that little down arrow to click on, right? That beats saying something intelligent.

Thanks for the reply.

<comment><USER19> Again, you seem to be conflating the Nobel _peace_ prize (awarded in Norway by one committee on the basis of inherently political criteria that you may or may not find "myopic") with the Nobel prize in _Economics_ * , a prize given by a completely separate committee in Sweden on the basis of technical criteria that have been more or less uniformly judged uncontroversial, objective and non-political. While I'm sure there has been the occasional argument about who deserves it more, I'm not aware of anyone anywhere who's made the argument that the economics prize is a "little myopic", nor do I know who might be spreading that "word" either.

Basically: you are making a baldly partisan, political argument where none is appropriate. If you admit to not knowing enough to decide for yourself, the proper judge is not "history", but the experts on the committee who _do_ know this stuff quite well.

* Strictly, not true. The economics prize wasn't endowed by Alfred Nobel, but added more recently using funds from the original trust. Or something to that effect.

<comment><USER18> How can a comment about a committee in Sweden be partisan? Are they running for some kind of office here? There's nothing partisan here. I'm not recommending a party, and heck, I like the Swedes.

Look -- I'm ignorant. I've admitted as much. Why not have a reasonable conversation about it instead of all the hand-waving and yelling?

As far as I'm concerned, I was making a blanket statement about Noble prizes in soft sciences and the humanities. It's a generalization. Probably wrong. Guess what? I still get to make it, and I still think it's funny. If you'd like to discuss it reasonably, I'm game.

I'm happy with waiting 20 or 30 years and seeing how Krugman's research does. Are you? Or do we have to settle this now for once and all?

Last I checked, economics is a field with a lot of opinions. How can you be so certain Krugman has such great ideas? Geesh. We're still debating Keynes and Smith, you have to admit there is some room for opinion here, right?

<comment><USER21> "I'm happy with waiting 20 or 30 years and seeing how Krugman's research does. Are you? Or do we have to settle this now for once and all?"

The awards committee cited papers Krugman'd written in 1979, 1981 and 1991 as the basis for their decision.

You can be certain Krugman had such great ideas because his work has been widely cited by other Economists and has been recognized through awards such as the Nobel.

That we're still debating Keynes and Smith only further indicates the far reaching impact of their work.

<comment><USER18> Yes I am aware how that it is typical for the committee to cite works from decades ago.

That we're still debating Keynes and Smith indicate that economics is not like physics -- it has a long way to go. We certainly didn't debate Newton for a century: it was too obvious he was correct. There is lots of room for opinion. QED</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>