Deep-Fried Data - <AUTHOR> http://idlewords.com/talks/deep_fried_data.htm <comment><USER3> > For the generation growing up now, the Internet is their window on the > world. They take it for granted. It's only us, who have seen it take shape, > and are aware of all the ways it could have been different, who understand > that it's fragile, contingent. The coming years will decide to what extent > the Internet be a medium for consumption, to what extent it will lift people > up, and to what extent it will become a tool of social control.

I agree completely. This is something we should be cognizant of.

</comment><comment><USER4> > Many [programmers] work jobs that are intellectually stimulating, but > ultimately leave nothing behind. There is a large population of technical > people who would enjoy contributing to something lasting.

This hits pretty close to home.

<comment><USER5> Same here. I'm battling with this thought a lot. Beyond jobs, I think there should be communities of developers, designers, producers, writers, getting together and figuring out this stuff. And I don't mean open source projects. Let's group together smart people wanting to make a difference and have a hit list of things we (people) actually need. A group that would organise people into mission driven development.

I'm so fed up of getting paid to potentially make founders rich. Or to be a small cog in a gigantic machine on a slow decline. I'm also unemployable because I can't buy into the corporate BS anymore. And where I am, there doesn't seem to be design/dev jobs that actually want to make a difference. It's an economy problem.

The startup thing seems to be the best way we go about solving problems in the world today. But if you happen to _not_ be at the right place at the right time, meeting the right people, poof, it's gone. I can't imagine that an advanced specie would operate this way. We should be focused on solving problems, instead of being focused on escaping the rat race, to then be able to solve problems.

I'm glad I am not alone seeking purpose. There goes a point where you're technically advanced, you have itches to fix things and all you see is the broken economy of consumerism and "let's give kids video clips and smileys, derp".

<comment><USER6> > And I don't mean open source projects.

Then what do you mean? You described exactly what some of the largest, most successful FOSS projects (Firefox, KDE, Gnome, Libre Office, FreeBSD) are already doing.

> Let's group together smart people wanting to make a difference and have a > hit list of things we (people) actually need.

Well, the FSF maintains a list of "high priority Free Software projects" that need help, but it's strongly colored by the FSF's politics: [http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority- projects/](http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/)

<comment><USER7> > _You described exactly what some of the largest, most successful FOSS > projects (Firefox, KDE, Gnome, Libre Office, FreeBSD) are already doing._

They "make a difference"? How exactly? At best, I can understand that for Firefox.

<comment><USER6> By providing quality software that lets me and thousands of others get useful work done, and not forcing us to accept onerous licensing terms in the process?

But hey, none of those can cure cancer, so what's the point, right?

<comment><USER7> > _By providing quality software that lets me and thousands of others get > useful work done, and not forcing us to accept onerous licensing terms in > the process?_

That software (desktop Linux/UNIX) comes for free, and yet, only 1% or less (from browser stats of major traffic points) seem to opt to use it as their desktop.

Is this the kind of difference the parent was describing? Letting a small minority of people avoid "onerous licensing terms" that billions of others are OK and can get "get useful work done" with?

In the server, of course, it's a whole different story.

<comment><USER8> > That software (desktop Linux/UNIX) comes for free, and yet, only 1% or less > (from browser stats of major traffic points) seem to opt to use it as their > desktop.

>Is this the kind of difference the parent was describing?

Cancer kills 171.2 per 100,000[1]. So by your metrics, the Linux desktop folks make a bigger difference than curing cancer as 1% > 0.1712%

1\. Cancer mortility. see [https://www.cancer.gov/about- cancer/understanding/statistics](https://www.cancer.gov/about- cancer/understanding/statistics)

<comment><USER7> > _Cancer kills 171.2 per 100,000[1]. So by your metrics, the Linux desktop > folks make a bigger difference than curing cancer as 1% > 0.1712%_

This is the kind of illogical result stemming from only reasoning half-way.

First of all, the cure for cancer wouldn't affect only the ones that die but also the ones that don't but do suffer complications from current treatment, from going broke from paying for therapy/losing their job in the process, to severe chemo side-effects. It also hugely affects the families and loved ones of those who currently die of cancer.

Second, ever considered the kind and magnitude of impact? Saving even 171 persons (those in a single bunch of 100,000) from dying from cancer is, arguably, quite a bigger deal than sparing millions to have to use Windows or OS X or some commercial UNIX.

<comment><USER8> >>Cancer kills 171.2 per 100,000[1]. So by your metrics, the Linux desktop folks make a bigger difference than curing cancer as 1% > 0.1712%

> This is the kind of illogical result stemming from only reasoning half-way.

I'm glad you saw the flaws in your reasoning - the key phrase in that paragraph was "by _your_ metrics".

> Second, ever considered the kind and magnitude of impact?

My point exactly!! It's not just about numbers/proportion game where you get to say "1% or less [desktop Linux usage] is not a big difference" since it means the world to those who _depend_ on it, for example those who cannot afford Windows licenses or an Apple computer or who find non-free software unconscionable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _> I've saluted the efforts of Archive Team and the Internet Archive, but their activity is like having a museum curator that rides around in a fire truck, looking for burning buildings to pull antiques from. It's heroic, it's admirable, but it's no way to run a culture._

...but in the meantime, here's an obligatory and shameless plug for donating to the Internet Archive[1] (tax-deductible in the US), or better yet making a recurring monthly donation so they can more accurately forecast revenue for the year, or better still getting your employer to make a nice big donation to this crucial bit of Internet memorybanks.

And as for Archive Team, we're always looking for a few good geeks.[2] Run an instance of the Warrior on spare cloud servers, or help patch and ship code at GitHub.[3]

[1] [http://archive.org/donate/](http://archive.org/donate/)

[2] [http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Main_Page](http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Main_Page)

[3] [https://github.com/ArchiveTeam/ArchiveBot](https://github.com/ArchiveTeam/ArchiveBot)

<comment><USER10> The Archive is awesome, but the author's sensationalist description of what they do isn't really accurate.

For the most part, archive.org is not rushing in to save stuff that's about to be deleted.

Instead they are crawling the web 24/7, patiently maintaining a historical record.

Check out [http://oldweb.today](http://oldweb.today)

It is amazing

<comment><USER11> What the Archive Team saves does get uploaded to the Internet Archive, but they aren't officially part of it. I think Maciej's description of the Archive Team is accurate - they are the archivists of last resort. When a commercial service is about to disappear forever, they're the ones that spring into action and rescue as much data as possible. If companies and the people that comprise them cared enough about their users' data, there would be no need for the Archive Team.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Regarding Maciej's fears about machine learning -

I've written about this before, and even right now I'm not sure where I stand exactly, except that tweaking the algorithms to compensate for bias is definitely not the right answer: if you look at the mirror and don't like what you see, you don't draw on top of the mirror to accentuate the result! You go on a diet!

I liked the idea of data gardening, but the thought of going-to-communities is daunting. I get tired even thinking about it.

Regarding living beyond walled gardens:

> Publish your texts as text. Let the images be images. Put them behind URLs > and then commit to keeping them there. A URL should be a promise.

But people already do that! The question now is to turn to why people do otherwise. I personally do not understand the reason people say, post long blogposts on Facebook, but I do understand for services like Medium.

For example, I'm extremely tempted to write on Medium because it provides the network effects of readers clicking on tags to read next. So the question is how do we democratize that?

<comment><USER13>
      So the question is how do we democratize that?

Commenter _wtracy_ has already linked to the FSF's list of _High Priority Free Software Projects_... From there, look into what they have to say about free wifi (and in particular, but not limited to the OrangeMesh package): [http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/free- software...](http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/free-software- drivers-for-network-routers)

If a convincing case could be made that the benefits to National Security outweigh the costs to the copyright cartels, I'd be willing to bet that young secondary-schoolers would have a blast with a decently designed curriculum that includes a working student-to-student mesh-network as one of its goals.

<comment><USER12> I actually meant democratizing the network effect that Medium has. The "free marketing" bit.

I mean, right now one can pretty freely go write up a blog using self-hosted wordpress, octopress, pelican, hugo or whatever. But choosing that over Medium can sometimes mean a lot more work to put in. But if we can democratize the ease-of-use and the good bits of Medium/Facebook/Twitter... Maciej's end statement about "using open standards, write text in text, images in images" would have been achieved.

The problem is that corporations now create a significantly more compelling version (in most criteria - UX, UI, etc) of the Free and Open versions out there.

<comment><USER13> Right, I got that. I guess I meant to say- start young. Provide a compelling alternative to ad-driven consumerism... Otherwise, it seems that you're just talking about creating another new corporation with an more compelling (even if nonsensical) reason to adopt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Have to admit that I didn't expect to see that quirk of LiveJournal culture mentioned in an article on the HN front page, let alone in a speech to the Library of Congress. It just sort of faded away without really influencing the current generation of social networks.

Also, it's funny how the net changes, how unthinkable it is to have a social network that doesn't slice up people's data and use it to advertise to them now compared to how anti-advertising LiveJournal was back then. Not convinced it's a change for the better.

<comment><USER15> I'm the guy who gave this talk. To add to the funny, LiveJournal hired me to rewrite their ad engine in 2007. I did a horrible job at it, but turned my ineptitude into a principled and lucrative ideological stance that I have milked ever since.

Don't be afraid to pivot.

<comment><USER16> Was this recorded? Link?

<comment><USER17> There's a YouTube link at the top of the page. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gcu2GQf7PI&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gcu2GQf7PI&feature=youtu.be&t=5h31m50s)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't think I understand what the exact point of this talk was. Maybe the thesis was stated at the end of the talk when he said that he wishes the internet were more like a city rather than a mall. I think the internet can be like a city, and I think a great example of a place where people with conflicting ideas talk together is HN. Sure HN can be an echo chamber at times. But there's quite a few times when people with differing opinions talk about their different opinions.

Also I don't necessarily understand Ceglowski's stance on why we shouldn't use deep learning and should avoid surveillance on the web. I don't take issue with becoming a datapoint in Facebook's web of people because nothing bad has happened or can happen from me giving Facebook my data. When most people speak out about the data that's being collected about Facebook and Google users they say they're "worried about what could happen" but then never list any bad things that they're actually afraid of. The speaker falls to this issue too. Ceglowski says:

>I worry about legitimizing a culture of universal surveillance.

But then never explains what bad could happen from legitimizing that culture. Maybe I'm completely missing the point of the talk? Please explain what I'm missing if I'm actually missing something.

<comment><USER15> The audience for this talk was a bunch of librarians and fellow travelers who are bringing large archives and collections online, often at great expense. I wanted to encourage them to find new, engaged audiences for these collections, rather than fixate on how to analyze them with computers.

With regard to the dangers of surveillance, I've made a sustained argument about this in other talks. It boils down to the data being collected having great power to harm people if it is ever put to malicious use, and a lifespan that exceeds that of institutions we know how to run. My beef is not with the surveillance alone, but with the combination of surveillance and permanent storage.

<comment><USER18> Thank you for explaining that! The context is meaningful and makes your talk make sense.

On the regard of data talking into the wrong hands, I take issue to this argument because it's not a unique problem to personal data collection. Any data could be hacked - bank information, address, whatever. But that doesn't mean we don't use the internet for banking and etc. It means we try to make systems that are difficult to hack. It seems like you'd want data collection not to happen on websites like Facebook and Google, when hacking isn't a unique problem to those websites.

<comment><USER15> Here's a capsule summary of what I'm pushing for: [http://idlewords.com/six_fixes.htm](http://idlewords.com/six_fixes.htm)

<comment><USER19> I agree with that, but I have a small suggestion until these points are reality: you can consider adding/enabling SSL/TLS for your blog. Thanks!

P.S. I really like your posts and your tweets are hilarious, please don't ever stop.

<comment><USER20> Ok, this tweaks my curiosity. Why would one put SSL on a static personal/blog type website (assuming one doesn't care about the google penalty)?

<comment><USER21> For example, ISPs are not able to crawl your traffic if it's via HTTPS. I've worked on data sets gathered by major ISPs and it's scary how much they know about their users (especially if they also have a mobile phone with the same company). ISPs use such intelligence for personalised marketing (either for their own product catalogue or 3rd parties)

<comment><USER22> The URL isn't encrypted though, is it? Since there's no dynamic content on the page, they already know exactly what you're looking at.

<comment><USER23> The domain isn't, the full URL is. (But content size etc probably still allow identification of an individual page on a small site, and the context of the domain is already valuable)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I provide guidance to attorneys involved in the discovery process; "Technology Assisted Review" is of huge interest to those teams, as it allows them to leverage coding on a small sample of the population across a much larger set of documents. For many cases, the cost and (occasional) time savings is instantly attractive. Sadly, the process is hard to do well. Far too many screw it up in new and amazing ways.

The author's concerns over machine learning are well-founded. The best option I've been able to identify to ameliorate some of the concerns is focusing on the population that will be suppressed. Once the model returns the desired recall / precision, drawing samples from the excluded population with a rigorous acceptance standard can help validate whether you've simply built a model around your biases. Couple that with allowing an opponent to validate a randomly-selected sample and you've cleared up a lot of the uncertainty in the model.

It's not perfection, but perfection is a very difficult standard.

<comment><USER25> The issue with that approach is ensuring the suppressed are represented. When it's black vs white, you can oversample one and be done.

However, if there's any winner take all built into the system, there's a strong incentive to not even acknowledging dissent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Machine learning does not have less bias than human researchers. It is simply magnified at scale.

And that scale is exactly the state of the internet. There is so much data available to study and understand, that we absolutely need better tools, like machine learning or whatever we want to call it, to help us keep up. Shit's moving faster than our human perception can handle, especially for those who didn't grow up with the internet.

Yes the data analyctic tools we have right now are premature— like fast food to our productized minds— but they will improve rapidly, as our taste for quality improves.

But sure demonizing the things you don't like is one step on the path to learning what's truly valuable.

<comment><USER27> This is simply not true. Most algorithms can and will correct for biases in their inputs.

See this (somewhat technical) article where I go into explicit (simulations in numpy) levels of detail:

[https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/alien_intelligences_...](https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/alien_intelligences_and_discriminatory_algorithms.html)

The best analogy I've come up with for the non-technical is that algorithms are like humans trying to draw inferences on octopus society. Some octopi might have bias against some other octopi, but it's the height of octopusthromorphism to to expect a human to reproduce that bias.

<comment><USER28> This is very optimistic. There are well known and documented cases of ml algorithm bias and its cause [1].

And it's not surprising that data itself contains some biases from the humans creating it. Suppose police are asking machine learning where more crime is committed - there will be a feedback loop. Where are they currently making more arrests? If they spend more time there, the bias will be exaggerated.

The op correctly gauges how we should be cautious. Your post, I'm afraid, is misleading at best.

[1] [https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.technologyreview.com/s/6017...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.technologyreview.com/s/601775/why- we-should-expect-algorithms-to-be-biased/amp/?client=ms-android-google)

<comment><USER27> Of course data contains biases. But again, please read the article I linked; algorithms will have a tendency to correct that bias.

The examples in the article you link to are not algorithmic bias at all. They consist of:

1) Humans at Facebook manipulating trending results.

2) Google's keyword algorithm (accurately) reflecting the fact that people with black names are more likely to have arrest records.

Lets distinguish "bias" from "accurately learning things you wish it wouldn't learn" or "accurately learning things you wish weren't true."

None of what I'm saying is remotely controversial. If I told you statistics could detect and correct bias in a mobile phone compass, you'd just think "cool stats bro". Is this article remotely controversial? [https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/bayesian_calibration...](https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/bayesian_calibration_of_mobile_phone_compass.html)

The specific feedback loop you describe - variable detection probability => variable # of detections - can be directly mitigated. For a non-controversial example drawn from sensor networks (sensors report events with a delayed eraction, the longer you wait the more events you detect), see here: [https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/delayed_reactions.ht...](https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/delayed_reactions.html)

(You can find similar examples all over the place. I just link to the ones I wrote because they spring immediately to mind.)

In a compass, a sensor network, adtech or other quant finance, the idea that machine learning can fix biased inputs is not remotely controversial. The concept that statistics suddenly stops working to fix racism is just silly anthropomorphism.

<comment><USER28> Aha - I think I see our miscommunication. When you say bias you mean statistical bias.

Yes, machine learning is able to correct for that kind of bias - 538's polls forecast is a good example of that.

But you don't get to redefine racial bias to be something innocuous. Yes, black names are more likely to have arrest records, but that "fact" is super misleading [1].

Finally, you're talking past me. I'm not saying that statistics is broken. I'm saying that we should be especially mindful of the OPs point when they say this:

> So what's your data being fried in? These algorithms train on large > collections that you know nothing about. Sites like Google operate on a > scale hundreds of times bigger than anything in the humanities. Any > irregularities in that training data end up infused into in the classifier.

I think the OP author also has a related post about the kind of bias I'm talking about: [http://idlewords.com/talks/sase_panel.htm](http://idlewords.com/talks/sase_panel.htm)

[1]: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-farbota/black-crime- rates-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-farbota/black-crime-rates-your- st_b_8078586.html)

<comment><USER27> Without getting into a dispute about the definition of "bias", I'm saying that algorithms can accurately measure reality even if input(x=white, all else equal) != input(x=black, all else equal).

You are saying that algorithms are accurately measuring a reality you wish were different. I don't disagree with this.

The right thing to do is to actually answer unpleasant moral questions like "if blacks are 4x more likely to be dangerous criminals, what should we do about it?" But I guess overloading the word "bias" is a nice substitute for clearly thinking things through.

<comment><USER29> The problem is you're modeling a biased reality. And accurately modeling a biased reality may in many cases accentuate the bias. Take for example the previously-mentioned case of using an algorithm to determine where to focus your policing efforts. If the data you have says that more arrests are done in a particular part of the city, then you'll want to put more police there, right? But areas where there are more police will tend to see more arrests. So the fact that you're putting more police in an area where you see more arrests is just going to make the bias more extreme, causing even more arrests there. This causes a feedback loop. So you may be accurately modeling reality, but you're modeling a pre-existing bias and making it worse. And who knows why that pre-existing bias was even there? The fact that there were more arrests there may not be because that area actually has more crime committed, it could be due to other factors, such as racial profiling by police, and in that case your algorithm is now accidentally racist because it's perpetuating racial profiling.

<comment><USER30> The problems are really twofold:

(1) Defining the proper goals, and

(2) Measuring the right things (such as the real goals of interest rather than biased proxies.)

With police deployments, you are assuming the solution (rather than letting your algorithm optimize it) by saying "I want to put more police where more arrests occur". What you really want is probably something more like (the exact goal may be different, of course) "I want to deploy police resources where it will most effectively reduce the incidence of crime, weighted by some assigned measure of severity." Then let your ML algorithm crunch the various measurable factors and produce an optimum deployment to do that.

(But, then again with that goal -- and similar problems exist with many likely real goals -- you run into the other problem, which is measuring the _incidence_ of crime -- measuring crime reports may be the obvious approach, but there's plenty of evidence that lots of factors can bias crime reports, including communities having bad experience with police being less likely to report crimes.)

<comment><USER28> Thank you. This is so much clearer than what I was saying.

As you say, proper goals and measurement can fix a lot of these problems, and I don't think it's obvious that ml algorithms solve either of those

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> "The names keep changing—it used to be unsupervised learning, now it's called big data or deep learning or AI"

Um, I'm sorry, but unsupervised learning and deep learning are not the same.

<comment><USER15> What's the distinction?

<comment><USER32> Unsupervised refers to whether or not the dataset is being trained against anything. Think about the difference between: How many people will view this webpage? Divide these pages into 20 clusters? The first is supervised. The second isn't.

Deep learning refers to a particular type of a particular learning technique: Specifically a neural network that has many hidden (intermediate) layers. Deep learning can be used for either supervised or unsupervised learning.

<comment><USER33> I agree with your sentiment, it feels out of place because deep learning, AI and big data are buzzwords, but unsupervised learning is a rather technical term in machine learning referring to a very specific class of problems.

<comment><USER34> Are they really buzzwords? To me, they have rather particular meanings (although I guess others may feel differently):

 _Deep learning:_ a particular type of artificial neural network with many hidden layers (and the associated tech to make this work/trainable)

 _AI:_ The field of computer science which aims to make computers smarter. Like most fields, there is much overlap with others, for example, statistics.

 _Big Data:_ A buzzword. About the best definition I can find is anything which has the 3 V's: Volume, Velocity & Variety. In general, outside its use as a buzzword, I think big data is generally thought of as "when you need a distributed system to process your data", be it because of volume, velocity or variety.

 _Supervised and unsupervised learning:_ whether or not you require example data for training

 _Machine learning:_ some people say its the subset of AI that deals with statistical methods, other people say its just another word for AI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Idelwords is one of those blogs worth dropping everything you do and just take a deep breath and dive in and revel in the joy of clear thought expressed through clear prose. Love it. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER36> "...Dim witted grad student that you can't really trust..."

Reminds me of the phrase "graduate student descent" for training neural networks...

I've been noticing more casual dismissiveness towards grad students lately. They are certainly often treated as the grunt laborers of academia, in areas where career prospects are downright stupid. I generally feel it would be more productive to at least pretend that they're being trained to be independent, aggressive researchers in their own right, though.

<comment><USER33> grad students are put in the same category as interns and teenagers, a naive type of person still in the making. i dont think there's any ill will intended.

<comment><USER37> You are dim witted.

No ill will intended.

<comment><USER38> There's a difference between metaphors/jokes and insults addressed at you personally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> "And this time it's not the government, but the commercial Internet that has worked so hard to dismantle privacy."

So true.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm currently applying for co-op jobs (internships) and while trawling the university job board I've seen many positions requiring big data this or machine learning that.

What's not clear to me is why companies who don't seem to have any need for machine learning team (i.e. a subscription box company) are looking to hire one.

Surely part of this can be pinned down to the hype associated with ML that may well die out, but the proliferation of these tools doesn't bode well for Maciej's dream of a weird, creative, and interesting internet.

<comment><USER40> These companies aren't looking for someone to develop new machine learning techniques, they are just looking for someone who can slap together existing utilities to meet their goals.

Companies that run on subscription literally live and die by their churn rate. It is both feasible and reasonable for a subscription box company to hire someone to use machine learning to build a predictive churn model. That may seem trivial to you but that's the reality behind those job posts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Giving up control is harder than the author makes it seem. It isn't so much that you give it up, but that you give _to_ someone else. Picking that someone else is extremely difficult and a wrong choice will destroy your community.

Using machine learning on the other hand is a safe bet. It is much easier, I would assert, to write machine learning code to organize data than to curate a community of humans to organize data. The ML approach will do pretty good even if it isn't the best, which is why it's what everyone is switching to.

Keeping with the author's example, is it easier to organize erotic fanfic with a computer, or enable a community to do it without spiraling out of control?

<comment><USER42> For example, it is clearly easier to write a machine learning system to find interesting articles and highlight insightful commentary, compared to using something so crude as a group of people on a website collectively voting on which stories and comments they like... wait a minute...

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> If you think the Internet is as safe and controlled as a shopping mall, you probably should be reading Krebs on Security more.

People tend to move towards the more mall-like areas of the Internet due to spam and abuse that they don't want to deal with. This can be low-level stuff, or (as in the cases of Kreb himeself) sometimes the attackers get out the big guns, and you need to run for cover.

And that's why we're hanging out here, after all, and not in some unmoderated forum. And even here, post on certain subjects and conversation quickly degenerates.

I think we do need a wider variety of spaces to hang out, though. No set of rules works for everyone. And if you do want 4chan, you know where to find it.

<comment><USER44> > If you think the Internet is as safe and controlled as a shopping mall, you > probably should be reading Krebs on Security more.

That's an amusing comparison, given how much of Krebs focuses on offline ATM skimming, copying credit cards at point-of-sale terminals, hacking major retailers's CC databases, and using stolen cards at retail and mall stores to cash them out...

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> > _Publish your texts as text. Let the images be images. Put them behind URLs > and then commit to keeping them there._

I sounds like he's saying ephemeral content is worthless and should be shunned.

I, and hundreds of millions of others, disagree. You want a bland, awful, boring society? Easy: make everything you do stick around forever—like a promise. And then watch the world self-police as the lifeblood drains out of it.

You'll get…Facebook. No thanks.

<comment><USER15> The audience for this talk was people with very large collections they're bringing online. I was trying to encourage them to avoid exotic formats, custom plugins, custom software (shudder) when they put this material online, and make them web accessible.

For example, here is three quarters of a PETABYTE of historical American newspapers: [http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov](http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov)

<comment><USER45> Okay, that makes sense. I 100% agree that bringing collections online in exotic formats is a terrible idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Thank you for this article. I have really enjoyed your writing style, especially the creative metaphors you're been using :)

</comment><comment><USER47> I have been having similar thoughts for a while: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10937201](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10937201)

</comment><comment><USER48> >the Internet is a shopping mall. There are two big anchor stores, Facebook and Google, at either end. There's an Apple store in the middle, along with a Sharper Image where they are trying to sell us the Internet of Things. A couple of punk kids hang out in the food court, but they don't really make trouble. This mall is well-policed and has security cameras everywhere. And you guys are the bookmobile in the parking lot, put there to try to make it classy.

It's already been mentioned, but this guy needs to get out a bit more.

The internet is a city. There's the specialist shops (HN), the bustling malls (Reddit, YT), the shady back alleys (4chan, 8chan etc.), the historical districts (Usenet, Archive.org), the cafes (IRC, ICQ, Slack, etc.). To their credit, the author is more knowledgeable than most, however.

I see so many dismiss the internet as just Facebook, or YouTube, discuss trolling as if it's a single phenomenon, and it's a recent thing, associated with Social Media. So many think that there's an internet culture: there isn't: there's a set of almost infinite numbers of overlapping, interlinked cultures. I can even map out the origins and historical influences of a few. There are even a few who think that social media sites are good forums of discussion. The poor sods: the Usenet was a better discussion forum than Facebook ever was, and the Usenet's not that great.

If you really want to see what the internet is like (that isn't advice for the author: I'm pretty sure the mall analogy doesn't encompass his internet experience, and is merely an analogue I find odd), explore. See it all, in all of its weird, wacky, zany, jokey, serious, offensive, manic, smart, stupid, brilliant, insane glory. I promise you, you won't be dissapointed.

People ask me why I'm not on social media. It's because social media is boring. Unlike Reddit, 4chan, and the rest, not much interesting happens. Unlike HN, I'm not likely to be intellectually stimulated, or learn something new. Unlike static sites, I don't get to see that kind of wild creativeness that personal webspace tends to invite in hackers, nerds, and others who know what makes the web tick. I don't want to see what you ate, I don't want to see your cat, I don't want to hear banal details about your everyday life. I want to hear something intersting, new, and original. I want to hear the next Ze Frank, or Tom Ridgewell, or Simon Travaglia, or Steve Yegge, or RMS, or PG, or Ryan Dahl, and you can bet I won't on a site with a signal:noise ratio that high.

People also ask why I'm fascinated with the internet. My response is, why wouldn't I be? It's a catalogue of decades of human creativity and interaction. It's open mike night at the largest club in the world, which is also a discussion forum, and a shady back alley, and a convention. It is - <USER2> borrow and butcher Sir Terry's words - like being blindfolded and drunk at several different parties at once.

But, in what it rapidly becoming the sign-off on my incoherent, long-winded ramblings that are really only tangentially connected to the topic at hand, maybe I'm just totally mad.

EDIT: tried to clarify that I wasn't trying to insult the author. Not my intent, but it seemed to come off that way. It still does, but less so, and I prefer not to edit my old content too much. Also, I just checked out pinboard. Pinboard is amazing, and I am impressed.

Basically, don't take this as anything more than a tangential, incoherent ramble started by an analogy the author used which I found unrepresentative. Because that's what it is.

<comment><USER49> "Needs to out a bit more" given the context is hilarious. I bet a cool $20 he is more widely traveled than you - both physically and digitally.

<comment><USER48> Indeed, as would I, on further reflection. I wrote a postscript at the bottom to this effect, more or less.

I write most of my HN comments in the spur of the moment. As a result, they're often inaccurate, idiosyncratic, poorly explained, or just weird. If anybody asks, I ususally try to clear up any confusion.

This isn't necessarily a good idea, but if I thought too much before I spoke, beyond a cursory look to see if I'm violating the rules, I'd be to afraid to post anything interesting, or anything at all beyond polite agreement with everybody, which is so very dull, don't you agree?

2933 votes and countless interesting discussions later, seems to have worked our okay for me.

<comment><USER50> Maciej/IdleWords is a bit of a sacred monster around here. He loves to hate on the HN crowd, and he definitely has a dim opinion of the VC/get-rich-quick internet schemes that one could characterize the Valley for. He provides a great reality check for the kind of internet bullshit that flies around a lot.

He's featured here frequently: [https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=idlewords.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=idlewords.com)

On a lighter tone, I highly recommend his "Argentina on Two Steaks a Day" [1] and "The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel" [2], each of which had me laughing harder than anything else in my life.

[1] [http://idlewords.com/2006/04/argentina_on_two_steaks_a_day.h...](http://idlewords.com/2006/04/argentina_on_two_steaks_a_day.htm)

[2] [http://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_t...](http://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_tunnel.htm)

<comment><USER48> Ah. That explains a lot. He's definitely well-spoken. And I don't mind people criticizing the VC crowd. I don't people criticizing stuff in general, so long as it's well done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Rather hilariously, deep frying is already a term of art in ML, of course in a radically different setting. Deep fried convnets ([https://arxiv.org/abs/1412.7149](https://arxiv.org/abs/1412.7149)).

<comment><USER52> One (not especially widely read) paper's title can hardly be called a "term of art" in ML.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Frankly as a grad student (The kind that the author apparently considers "dim witted"), the entire article is meaningless babbling without any underlying theme.

I wonder if the author truly understands "Machine Learning", what are his qualifications? A degree in Art History, and some "programming experience" aren't very assuring. E.g.

>> "The names keep changing—it used to be unsupervised learning, now it's called big data or deep learning or AI"

WTF?? The author should enroll in a beginner Machine Learning course on Udacity or Coursera before making philosophical statements about fields he has zero clue about.

It seems the only skill the author has is piecing together meaningless arguments that appeals to average HN users incapable of distinguishing between informed opinions and pseudo-scientific rants. Hell at least bad graduate students have to give examinations, read papers and make original contributions that get peer reviewed (otherwise they fail/get-kicked-out/drop- out). Not like this guy who does not understands difference between "supervised" and "unsupervised" machine learning, yet feels comfortable in making "prophetic" statements about machine learning.

Also

>>> "These techniques are effective, but the fact that the same generic approach works across a wide range of domains should make you suspicious about how much insight it's adding."

What does he means by "same generic approach". If we assume he is implying specific algorithms then we have a good "No free lunch" theorem that shows that a single algorithm is not effective across all domains. Now if by "generic approach" the author mean "machine learning" in general then its as ridiculous as saying

"Mathematics is effective, but the fact that the same Mathematical approach works across a wide range of domains should make you suspicious about how much insight it's adding."

The entire article is filled with "truthiness" and "feel-good" statements, which fall apart on closer examination.

<comment><USER15> My degree was in studio art, not art history.

<comment><USER53> Those two are still orders of magnitude closer to each other when compared to difference between unsupervised learning with deep learning.

<comment><USER23> As someone with not particularly deep knowledge in either area, that admittedly sounds a lot like "no, but the differences between subfields in MY subfield are way more important than all that stuff over there", which is similar to what you claim the article does. They are important once you care about any details, but not for just describing changing fashions.

So I'm curious to hear a good explanation for that assertion, founded in knowledge of both areas.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


HAMR-JR microrobot demonstrates dexterity - <AUTHOR> https://www.theengineer.co.uk/hamr-jr-microrobot-harvard/ <comment><USER2> I've wanted to get into using these piezoelectric actuators for small robots, but it's difficult to get specs on them, and buy them in small quantities. They seem like almost the perfect actuator though. They have small size, high force, high precision and repeatability, and great speed.

Last I checked, the control systems and availability were the main problems, and you couldn't get one for less than a few hundred dollars. I'm not sure why.

</comment><comment><USER3> Drop the ro. Microbot. It's simpler.</comment>


Why aren't chip credit cards stopping "card present" fraud in the US? - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/11/why-arent-chip-credit-cards-stopping-card-present-fraud-in-the-us/ <comment><USER2> That seems fairly obvious. Most places still do not support the chip.</comment>


What Tolkien Officially Said About Elf Sex (2002) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ansereg.com/what_tolkien_officially_said_abo.htm <comment><USER2> This level of analysis on fiction makes me wonder if most organized religions are little more than devoted fandoms whose basis in fiction was lost over time.

I can _totally_ imagine a future civilization taking LotR or ASOIAF as the basis for a religion. Not that it would be a world I'd want to live in, but I can see it. If it can happen for Scientology, anything is possible.

<comment><USER3> The origin of Christianity was the resurrection event of Jesus Christ. It was not regarded as fiction at the time.

<comment><USER4> "At the time" was a few hundred years after his death. There isn't even Roman records for him, let alone his crucification. Christianity also underwent several drastic dogma shifts between their early years and what eventually came out a thousand years later, a Christian today would barely recognize an early Christian's beliefs at all. None of this is unique to Christianity of course, all religions undergo similar evolutions.

<comment><USER3> Scholars generally accept that the book of Mark was written between 66-70 AD. The idea that the gospels were written "hundreds of years later" is a common myth on the Internet that scholars do not take seriously. It is clear that Jesus's followers believed in his resurrection, they proclaimed it loudly and suffered and died for it, gaining many converts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Site didn't load for me, here's an archive link: [https://web.archive.org/web/20190323172706/http://www.ansere...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190323172706/http://www.ansereg.com/what_tolkien_officially_said_abo.htm)

</comment><comment><USER6> Heh, Tolkien thought of everything ;) Seriously though, "Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth" ("The Debate of Finrod and Andreth") is a masterpiece IMO. Starting out as a dry but interesting philosophical debate about how elves and humans see the afterlife, it develops to a truly devastating twist near the end.

</comment><comment><USER7> It would be very interesting to have a corresponding one for elves before (and beyond) Tolkien.

<comment><USER8> IIRC the Fae are the Celtic/Irish (British) equivalent of Norse elves and they do have the tradition of Changelings, half-Fey half-human children who can choose to be human or Fae when they went into adulthood. So not that much different in outcome from Tolkienish Eldar.

<comment><USER9> I'll take Jim Butcher's fae. Funny enough, in Butcher's fiction, J.R.R. was the mortal champion of the Summer fae (the "nice" ones).

<comment><USER8> I wouldn't. The worst of Eldars in the Silmarrion is much lesser evil than even the best among the Dresdenverse Fae. For one, the former doesn't try to steal your children because you inadvertently made a deal with them.

But to be honest, as characters the Dresden Fae makes _sense_. And humans can and do become Fae, if only at the cost of your mortal soul. So not that much separation unlike the Firstborn and the Atani.

(Incidentally, I really like this fanfic about Harry Potter waking up in Dresdenverse and got hitched with Aurora, the Seelie Summer Lady; breaking the canon plot in the process. I don't think a similar relationship can really happen between a Tolkien Elf and a human (or other mortal) without something really special going on. Like Aragorn or, uh, his First Age ancestors.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Five errors that immediately get your resume rejected at Google - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/267471/five-errors-that-immediately-get-your-resume-rejected-at-google/ <comment><USER2> I strongly feel the linked profile should be the unified process for interview, it helps many people to expedite the process and avoid such mentioned mistakes.</comment>


Using Heroku buildpacks with Stackato (Cloud Foundry-based PaaS software) - <AUTHOR> http://www.activestate.com/blog/2012/06/static-site-stackato-using-heroku-buildpacks-jekyll

<comment><USER2> Thinking of migrating off Heroku? this is the way to go. bring your buildpacks and get stackato <http://bit.ly/STKTO></comment>


Get Better Advice by Taking Notes - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5270397/get-better-advice-by-taking-notes <comment><USER2> It's not taking notes, it's paying attention. It's listening. It's letting the speaker know that you are interested and value what they are saying.

If you've ever tried teaching someone something, this happens to geeks all the time, someone asks you a question right? How do I calculate the average of all the values in this excel spreadsheet? So you tell them. Then the next day, same question. Then the next day, next week... same question.

People just don't pay attention. They don't want to work. They don't want to work to rearrange their neurons so they can remember things. They'd rather remember what they have programmed to record on TiVo when they get home.

If you don't really value what the person is saying, don't waste their time by making them think you care because you are taking notes.

Take notes if you care. The irony is, if you care, you'd be taking notes without reading this lifehacker stuff. You'd be taking notes so that you don't have to waste that person's time with the same question over and over. You'd actually take the time and put the energy into _learning_ and committing to memory inside your brain what you are hearing.

<comment><USER3> While I used to agree with this kind of black and white perspective on _caring_ I've lately begun to think differently.

As with everything about the human brain, its all in shades of gray. The logical part of you might care a lot, but your subconscious is distracting it with memories of that cute girl from last night, and so on.

I've learned that its very useful to give your higher brain functions some external help. Sometimes this means throwing out all of the snacks when you go on a diet. And sometimes this means taking a notepad with you and taking notes even when you don't really think you need to.

"Pretending" to care by taking notes quickly turns into really caring and paying much more attention to what you are doing than you would otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Taking notes at university has become one of those odd analog vs digital tasks where my preferences fall uncomfortably with neither.

I find software leaves much to be desired. I need the ability to tack graphs, formulas, side notes where ever I please, like Photoshop. Yet I need better text editor support, like Word or OpenOffice.

Doing it by hand is fine, but I can't take notes as quick as I can by typing. I have full control over a page, but there is no Ctrl-Z for spelling mistakes which can leave notes disfigured and unsettling to study from.

The solution to all of this would be to copy by hand and then re-type on the computer but this again takes a lot of time. Perhaps something like LaTeX etc. would help but again.. too much time spent on actual documentation preparation when it should be spent on note-taking.

Can anyone relate to what I'm ranting on about?

<comment><USER5> When I studied math, I tried transcribing my notes into LaTex, but found that, while enjoyable, it was too slow, and I got behind. Maybe a tablet PC with some type of note-taking software would work, but that's pretty annoying. I like to use PC's for things that humans can't do themselves, like crunching numbers while I sleep.

I got fast enough at hand notes, and found that if I kept my book open during the lecture, that I could skip note taking on a portion of the lecture if it was covered adequately in the book.

<comment><USER6> > _it was too slow, and I got behind._

This is purely a function of practice. 5 years ago, a friend of mine could TeX math notes substantially faster than I could write them by hand, including reasonably complex commutative diagrams, lots of tricky formulae, etc. A big part of TeX speed is setting up a bunch of personal macros for commonly used symbols (e.g. \a instead of \alpha, etc.).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a great habit to get into when you really need to remember/understand the material. I have worked at several science and engineering labs; when someone demonstrates a procedure, you better have a damn good memory if you aren't writing it down!

It hadn't previously occured to me do this in the doctor's office, but it's a good idea - the info a doctor gives can sometimes be (or should be) fairly involved. It's worth writing down.

Furthermore, taking notes allows you to process the information on two levels. The technical details (names of things, etc) can be relegated to the notepad and forgotten. Important general concepts can then receive your greater attention. A doctor who gives more involved advice to a note-taker is a doctor who knows that you can handle more information if you're writing some of it down.

<comment><USER8> Funny. Where I work, if I show/explain/tell someone how to do something, I can either repeat the lesson every time the question comes up, or document the procedure in detail and give the person a copy. If I do take the time to document it, then I can simply reprint a copy _every_ time the question comes up.

Now if only I had a way to handle the situation where someone attempts to perform a task, but forgets an important step or two along the way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The fear of being held responsible could also be a certain factor of the keenness of the advisor; concern for what 'evidence' exactly ends up in that notebook.</comment>


Do you even bake, bro? How the Silicon Valley set fell in love with sourdough - <AUTHOR> https://www.eater.com/2018/11/19/18099127/bread-silicon-valley-sourdough-tech-bros-tartine-chad-robertson <comment><USER2> I would like to have my own self-hosted bakery!</comment>


Success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.org/2008/05/22/success-is-going-from-failure-to-failure-with-no-loss-of-enthusiasm/ <comment><USER2> Quitters never win and winners never quit but people who never win and never quit might want to re-examine what they are doing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great quote sown</comment>


Ask HN: Any hackernews entrepreneurs in Ft. Worth, Texas? - <AUTHOR>

I was wondering if there were any hackers in ft worth that might be interested in starting a coworking space-- nothing big. I'm thinking maybe we can use a room at a library or find an area that would be suitable to bring laptops etc.<p>I know there's one in dallas, but thought it would be nice to set one up around ft. worth/nrh area. <comment><USER2> Just missed you, I was working in Arlington but recently moved to Seattle.

<comment><AUTHOR> bummer. oh well. I'm hoping to set something up really informal..just so we have a place to work that is not home. maybe just a group of hackers at a library or quiet place where we can build. nothing fancy.</comment></comment>


"The Precession of Simulacra" by Jean Baudrillard - <AUTHOR> http://continentcontinent.com/index.php/continent/article/viewArticle/91 <comment><USER2> If you're confused, you might want to read Richard Dawkins's general rebuttal to this type of twaddle: <http://old.richarddawkins.net/articles/824>

</comment><comment><USER3> Please tell me this a parody.</comment>


Ask HN: Any Product Hunt moderator here? - <AUTHOR> I want to know which is best approach for submitting a new product to Product Hunt. <comment><USER2> Based on the "How Product Hunt really works" discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10739875](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10739875) it's indeed best to look for a moderator to introduce you. I'm not sure if they hang out and/or identify publicly on HN.</comment>


Chinese Gov.'s biography of Liu Xiobao, dissident and recent Nobel Prize winner - <AUTHOR> http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/indepth/2010-10/28/c_13579766.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> I found it interesting that this biography is so different than the ones that have been written in Western news recently. Can anyone here speak to how accurate it might be?</comment>


Lego Teaches us About the Power of Near-Perfect User Experience - <AUTHOR> http://uxmag.com/articles/pop-ux-legos-teach-us-about-the-power-of-near-prefect-user-experience

<comment><USER2> And yet they made Lego games and failed to make something like Minecraft, which is a natural fit for them.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you have these pain points when consuming/building APIs? - <AUTHOR> Hey everyone,
I've experienced some pain as both an API consumer and provider. There are lots of consequential pains, these are the "main" ones IMO. I'm curious if anybody else resonates with these problems:
1. As a consumer and provider: Having to look at/manage different services for API docs, status, and change-logs.
2. As a consumer: Being able to subscribe to API statuses but typically not API docs (e.g. email me for a major API change).
3. As a provider: API documentation generation tools being heavy (cloning repos, running scripts, self-hosting, etc rather than having a nice hosted web UI) and inaccessible to non-engineers. <comment><USER2> Without going too deep, as a provider, Swagger has been a godsend for help with documentation, request examples, and a nice web UI for front-end developers to test against.

<comment><AUTHOR> Any pains listed that you identify with or are these non-issues for you?</comment></comment>


Why solar storms from space may blind and strand whales - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/24/world/gray-whale-solar-storms-scn/index.html <comment><USER2> >solar storms from space As opposed to?

<comment><USER3> If their targeted audience were only engineers and scientists I think this criticism would be OK but the audience of CNN is broader. If you already know what a solar storm is, the headline might pique your interest. If you do not, it is far less interesting as the headline reduces to "something is having an effect on whales" ... _yawn_. That's different from "something _from space_ is having an effect on whales". Now _that_ 's interesting.</comment></comment>


Fantasy Advice: Passphrases - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@unplugged/fantasy-advice-passphrases-aa839cac02e0

<comment> xkcd-sucks I thought this was going to be an article about using rule based attacks to reduce the entropy in a passphrase and using statistics to reduce the entropy in the dictionary...</comment>


Will my earning potential be severely limited as a felon? - <AUTHOR> Last year in February I was arrested and  charged with 4 counts of possession with intent to distribute (I had small amounts of 4 different drugs). My case is a few months away from coming to a close. While there's a small chance I could receive a deal that drops my charges after successful completion of probation, it's somewhat likely I will instead do probation and receive the convictions.
I fear that if I receive the convictions (which cannot be expunged in my state) then I will be limited to small companies with mediocre pay. Is this true? Are my hopes of making a great living in this field squandered because I screwed up, admittedly totally, at one point in my life?
I'm re enrolling in school this fall and still have 3 ish years to go due to switching majors to CS. Showing that I can finish school will work on my favor. Are there any other things I can be doing to improve my chances of finding a great job after school if I do indeed receive convictions?
Thanks :) <comment><USER2> If your felony was murder or rape or something, I think the answer would be "yes". But under the circumstances, I think you will find lots of companies (probably startups in particular) are run by people who don't care about a "possession with intent" charge.

If we were in a position to hire right now, and I were evaluating you as a candidate, it would barely factor in at all. Hell, I might even consider it a positive. But I'm a government hating libertarian who thinks all drug laws should be abolished, so my position may be a bit unique.

</comment><comment><USER3> As an interesting note:

Lots of companies that do background checks aren't doing them to see if you have an arrest record at all.

They are doing them to see if you have been honest and if you haven't been convicted of financial crimes, or computer crimes.

The former is a big deal if you do credit card processing and money handling, the latter may or may not be an issue depending on what it is and who you are working for.

Smaller companies give a lot of leeway to hiring managers, and there are jobs that you may be excluded from, but it isn't the end of the world. Honestly, places that believe past performance is a predictor of future results need a reality check. Peoples lives, and circumstances change enough that it isn't a good predictor of anything.

As you are a CS student, I highly recommend that you start working on and contributing to open source projects and personal projects. Working as an engineer ends one of three ways... You spend your years pushing the buttons and collecting a check, you do that same thing and get lucky with an exit or you start doing your own thing. That last one gives you mastery over your own fate and destiny and is the way a lot of us are really getting ahead.

It is much easier to try and fail when your young... eating ramen, working long hours aren't as rough on you and not having kids or dependents are big factors to you being able to sustain a lifestyle that those of us who are older don't have as easy of a time doing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I ultimately plan on starting my own thing. Whether that be consulting, or SaaS, or whatever, I'm not sure. But I don't feel I'll ever be fulfilled until I'm making money for myself. I'm going to be graduating with quite a lot above the average student debt, though, so my first 5 ish years after school I plan on spending as an employee, gaining skills and dumping everything I can towards the loans. Thank you for your response!

<comment><USER4> As your own boss I doubt anyone would know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Felony convictions will close many doors, especially at large companies.

Focus on places with "ban the box" laws and jobs that don't have direct impact with financial or health data.

You'll be fine. Hold yourself to a higher standard going forward and you'll be fine.

</comment><comment><USER6> "with the intent to distribute" is what you need to figure out how to explain to a hiring manager (if that's on your record like that, I have no idea how detailed that information might be). Questions like what were you thinking, did you know the law, the consequences, etc. The hiring manager probably couldn't care less about drugs, they want to assess your ability to make judgements.

In any case, I'd suggest you keep your dev skills above average. That will help make this situation less important. With a shortage of skilled professionals, certain things can be ignored provided they aren't too blatant (or are shown to have improved).

</comment><comment><USER7> This thread from 3 years (1223 days) ago discussed this topic rather thoroughly: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6750043](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6750043)

</comment><comment><USER8> I think you'll be OK if you can manage your Google search results to hide your conviction as best you can. Many small companies will limit their "background check" to Googling your name.

</comment><comment><USER9> In short no. I make over 200k base.

I was in the same boat but with worse drug charges. Very few startups will do background checks and after 7yrs an employment background check in california legally cant show convictions before then anyways.

Its not like you killed or raped someone.

Plus, dont pay lip service to the thought police. You ingested a drug and theres nothing wrong with that. Lie to the judge and say you're sorry if you must but they are in the wrong not you.

<comment><AUTHOR> This gives me hope. I realize you don't want to share personal information, but assuming you do have felonies (or even if you don't), how did you get into a position of making 200k base? Are you working for a small or larger company? I'm also assuming you're in SV. Once I finish school (I live in the Midwest) I plan on moving to the northwest or SV. Or really wherever I have the best chances with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> \- Move to California where everyone is on something. Including the police and judge. \- Try applying to Apple. Steve Jobs is quote for saying everyone should try lsd \- build a cool side project so any company who passes is obviously denying you a job based on your criminal record. Aka discrimination. Take the fuckers to court and own the company at the end of the day

<comment><USER11> Steve Jobs saying everyone should try LSD is not the same as actually getting a felony for illegal drug possession.

Honest question: Is it actually illegal to discriminate in the hiring process based on criminal record? Especially if it's a felony?

<comment><USER12> A lot of misinformation on here.

The short answer is it depends on where you live. Many states and localities, particularly in California, have enacted "ban the box" laws. ("the box" in this particular case is a box you must check if you have been convicted of any crime). The rationale behind these laws is that ex-cons who are potentially productive members of society don't need to keep getting punished after they served their time.

Can you discriminate against someone for having a criminal record? Yes, but if there's enough of a paper trail, and you're in one of these localities, they can sue you under these laws. Most of these laws have exceptions for, say, sex offenders applying at daycares, or check fraudsters applying at banks, but the decision has to be appropriately documented.

SF and LA are pushing the laws even harder. They've recognized that ex-cons who can't find decent work will just end up burdening the system further by reoffending, rather than paying taxes and working. If they're square with the house, the house must be square with them.

<comment><USER13> "Ban the box" laws do _not_ prohibit consideration of criminal record in hiring, it only prohibits the question in initial application and delays background check until later in the hiring process, to discourage it's use as a blanket filter before other candidate qualifications are known.

A handful of local jurisdictions have adopted additional restrictions on use of criminal background in hiring beyond "ban the box"—so-called "fair chance in hiring" laws—but none of them go so far as to prohibit use of criminal history as a factor in employment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't know the answer but I'll say good luck, and the "lemonade from the lemons" might be to just start your own business / startup / freelance from the beginning and enjoy never having a boss or a scrum meeting.

</comment><comment><USER15> I had a roommate in college that served time for a crime. He was only able to get jobs as a short order cook or as a roofer.

But given the resources to start your own company, even if it is bootstrapped, I think you have more options today than he did back them.

</comment><comment><USER16> The short answer is: if you're a minority, yes. If you're white, no. Either way your potential will be harmed, but like many things, this can be overcome as well. You'll have to be probably way above average to overcome the "gravity" that will hold you back as a felon. After that I'd say there will be no more barriers, sans management positions.

<comment><USER5> That's an incredibly ignorant statement.

<comment><USER16> Really?

This is common knowledge. Just go read the book -- Marked: Race, Crime and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration.

Why pretend like being black isn't a severe disadvantage in terms of almost every metric you can think of? Failing to acknowledge reality just perpetuates inequity.

Sorry, but I'm not sugar coating reality for felons, white or black. People saying "you'll be fine" are just lying, full-stop. You will _not_ be fine. You _may_ be able to succeed, as many ex-felons have (which is really just survivorship bias as many felons stop looking for work all together), but your success will pale in comparison compared to the alternate self where you were not a felon. The discrimination against felons in the United States is borderline a human rights violation.

I wonder how many people in this thread have actually talked to felons who are looking for a job.

\- [http://thecrimereport.s3.amazonaws.com/2/fb/e/2362/criminal_...](http://thecrimereport.s3.amazonaws.com/2/fb/e/2362/criminal_stigma_race_crime_and_unemployment.pdf)

\- [https://thinkprogress.org/a-black-college-student-has-the- sa...](https://thinkprogress.org/a-black-college-student-has-the-same-chances- of-getting-a-job-as-a-white-high-school-dropout-b7639607fdf1#.sm40skwnr)

\- [https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2011/dec/15/study- shows...](https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2011/dec/15/study-shows-ex- offenders-have-greatly-reduced-employment-rates/)

In any case, if you have evidence suggesting that a felony doesn't ridiculously reduce your employment prospects and earning potential (among other things), I'd love to see it.

<comment><AUTHOR> This sucks to hear, but probably true. Meeting me in person, never would you ever consider that I've been in any trouble with the law at all. Knowing that the rest of my life could very well be an immense struggle is a pretty shitty feeling.. but I need to hear it.

<comment><USER16> I'm sorry about your situation, but I think the people telling you "it'll be fine" are creating a reality you're not going to see. That being said, you can still see success in your career (with tech, primarily) that exceed most non- felon people in the United States in terms of wages. However, when you get to this point, you'll realize that you would've succeeded even more had you not been a felon. Anyway, I digress.

Some notes from talking to hiring managers at my company:

1\. I suspect HR just passes on felons directly during the application phase. What this means for you is that you need to bypass this. So if you pursue tech, networking is going to become super crucial for you.

2\. Something like crime would prove to be a tie-breaker if things are hard to judge. Given the lack of objectivity during tech interviews, this will put you at a disadvantage. In order to get your foot in the door, I would try to a "big fish in a small pond." Meaning, apply at smaller companies, non-profits, etc. Places where tech isn't the primary focus and show value.

3\. I assume you've seen this site [1]. I was reading an article a long time ago and saw it referenced. Hopefully it can be of use to you.

4\. What I would _strongly_ recommend is just becoming as good as you can, building your network as indicated in (1) and just contract and freelance. You know much better than I do. The discrimination against you for being a felon (even if it's non-violent) is offensive.

[1] [https://exoffenders.net/](https://exoffenders.net/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I see what you're saying. I'm hoping and praying for a deal where I don't get the convictions at all. That would quiet all my worries. It's a definite chance, but I'm planning for the worst. I will definitely take into account everything you said. Still, I have a slimmer of hope that over time, when the charges (or convictions) are 7-10+ years old, and depending on where I'm living at the time, I could see just as much success as anyone else, felon or not. Surely if a guy has very strong technical skills, great people skills, and valuable connections, the convictions could become a non-issue over time since he is valuable otherwise. But, we will see. Thanks for your advice :).

<comment><USER5> Hopefully you have a good attorney.

Make sure to demonstrate that you have ties to the community. Get letters from friends, teachers, relatives, coworkers, etc tonget in front of the judge and prosecutor.

You sound like someone who got caught up in something. Show that regret and accept responsibility. I haven't been through this, but I know people who have... good luck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> just be honest if you do get a felony if asked about it. If you lie and they do a background check and find it then that's an auto-no.

To be honest half of SV is on something or the other. So drug use / arrest for it for a small amount shouldn't be a big issue

</comment><comment><USER18> We should talk. My info is in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER19> get a lawyer and get the charges reduced to misdemeanors.</comment>


Mobile Ad Networks as DDoS Vectors: A Case Study - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/mobile-ad-networks-as-ddos-vectors/ <comment><USER2> Why are they using a photo from a Korean running race/event?

<comment><USER3> This looks like the original story for the photo:

[http://news.yahoo.com/beijing-marathoners-don-face-masks- bat...](http://news.yahoo.com/beijing-marathoners-don-face-masks-battle- smog-040527456--spt.html)

So... it's not?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So, block all ads is the only safe choice.

</comment><comment><USER5> This article is dumbed down to the point of having almost no substance.

URL should be:

[https://blog.cloudflare.com/mobile-ad-networks-as-ddos- vecto...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/mobile-ad-networks-as-ddos-vectors/)

<comment><USER6> Good point. Changed from [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34379254](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34379254).

Edit: it looks like a duplicate though: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10280894](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10280894).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > The tidal wave of data was traced to a pool of booby-trapped adverts that > had been seeded with malicious code.

Ahem.

> He speculated that the attack had worked because its creators had joined one > of the networks that piped adverts to people as they browsed the web.

AH-HEM!

</comment><comment><USER8> I think it's instructive to consider the smallest possible malicious program of this type, which involves only the use of a basic control structure and the ability to initiate a request. The control structure could be setInterval, a while or for loop; the request initiation can be an ajax call, or certain dom manipulations (like altering img.src or script.src).

Questions: did I miss something? Can you write a program that either a) detects these cases or b) provides a reasonable sandbox?

<comment><USER9> Yes, I'm sure you could pretty easily write said program. Then the people who did this would obfuscate their code and you could probably then detect that...and the game whack-a-mole will continue. Eventually as this cycle continues you will end up with something that looks a lot like today's anti- virus programs, (aka a pattern recognition engine...).

It's the (theoretical?) software that can detect these types of attacks before or as they are happening that is of interest to lots of people now a days.

<comment><USER8> I don't see how code obfuscation would help you defeat sand-boxing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Surprise Surprise! The Chinese President is in the US and suddenly there are scare stories popping up everywhere.

What a coincidence that CloudFlare decide to look at months old data and publish a story making China look bad, at the exact same time the Chinese President is visiting.

Remarkable timing.

Also shame on the BBC for a headline which implies there is an attack happening right now.

<comment><AUTHOR> What a bunch of bullshit.

We didn't 'decide to look at months old data and publish a story'. This is one of N articles we are writing about DDoS attacks we've seen.

Also, whenever people say "X makes China look bad" where X is some sort of botnet I like to remind them that China is _huge_ and has a quarter of Internet users and so a ton of machines. No surprise that there are a ton of machines that get used in botnets.</comment></comment>


Microsoft is giving parents 12 weeks' paid parental leave - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90489239/microsoft-is-giving-parents-12-weeks-paid-parental-leave <comment><USER2> Employee here. Due to covid-19, Microsoft is extending parental leave to all employees with kids aged between 0-12 years. This isn't normal parental leave that you take within a year after child birth.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's generous considering what's normal in the US, but a lot of developed countries offer 12–24 months by law. A baby is lot of work, what can you achieve in 1–3 months leave?

<comment><USER4> Microsoft is extending parental leave, not maternity/paternity leave. There is no country in the world that offers 12-24 months of a paid parental leave (in addition to the initial maternity/paternity leave).

<comment><USER5> Germany offers a max of 14 months of "parental allowance" for new parents. See [https://handbookgermany.de/en/live/parental- benefits.html](https://handbookgermany.de/en/live/parental-benefits.html) for example

<comment><USER6> And even longer up to 3y if you are part time (Elterngeld Plus). Keeps you connected to your job but allows you to raise your kids.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's very nice of them.

I recently received 12 weeks worth of _unpaid_ parental leave.

Thanks company!

<comment><USER8> That's the minimum required by law in USA FMLA

<comment><USER7> Was being factious. This isn't FMLA and isn't limited to parents at my company. Everyone gets this benefit now!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A hugely successful company finally moving into the 21st century on worker rights. Belated congratulations I guess.</comment>


Urban Living Might Just Survive Coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-15/urban-living-might-just-survive-coronavirus <comment><USER2> In my experience, "everyone" eventually leaves NYC. After 12 years, I have only one friend left from when I moved here. The average tour of duty in NYC is 5-6 years. Covid accelerated that timeline for many people, but they would have left anyhow, eventually.

<comment><USER3> Still here 24 years later. Not everyone leaves but yes you do see waves. A lot of people come for their 20s and then bail to go back where they came from to settle down. Then ten years later another wave leaves for the suburbs when their lifestyles no longer match up with urban living. And then there are lifers like me who love it here and hope to be here forever.

<comment><USER2> Definitely not everyone. But the percentages must be at least 90%. Maybe even 95%?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The exodus idea always seemed off to me - cities have the best culture, the best services, the best educational institutions, and the best opportunities, among other things. There's no small or even midsize town that can replicate that.

<comment><USER5> I cringed when I read this comment. This is exactly why half of the United States looks at the other half and calls them "out of touch elites." Saying city culture is better than rural culture is such a haughty statement.

<comment><USER4> Yes you're right I should have said "more culture" \- not necessarily better. But small places tend to have a singular culture with little variation. It's great when you fit in, but if not, tough luck kid.

The other points I stand by though. A couple months ago I had an issue with my ear and saw a world class ear doctor pretty easily. Good luck finding that in the rural US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was a bit skeptical at the beginning of people moving out of cities. But in my building the occupancy rate went from 100% to 70% during the pandemic and they are not going back. I've heard similar stories from friends that live in apartment buildings. It might just be anecdotal, but we will see

<comment><USER7> Pandemics are temporary, while the attraction of city life persists over millennia. If there any truth to such predictions, cities would have permanently dwindled after previous pandemics. Most of which were deadlier than Covid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Most of the people in urban places are young. Many are completely ignoring the lockdown orders or using parks as replacement bars.

I don't believing the max exodus even for tech. The whole idea of random ideas sparking from random interactions is still an unappreciated benefit of offices.

</comment><comment><USER9> Cities aren't dead. And a majority of people don't have the luxury of being able to work remote or move away from their jobs.

There was never going to be a "mass exodus" from cities. Rather, a subset of the people who could afford to leave and can work remote would leave. That is driving down rents and attracting the young people who still want to live in cities like New York.

<comment><USER10> While I don't think cities are dead, I think COVID has changed the balance of how centralized society will be. It's added a cost that didn't exist previously, and higher cost means lower demand.

As for the exodus, it is already happening to a degree in the Bay Area. People may come along and fill the gap eventually, but given the new cost I don't think demand will ever be what it used to be. Additionally, the Bay Areas growth in the last decade was driven almost entirely by an industry who's job are very easy to make remote, so there's an extra point against things bouncing back to before, at least here in SV. I know New York has benefitted from tech growth in the last decade as well, but it's still much more diversified than SV and will likely get off a little easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Love our media's finest in speculating that it was the "end of cities" in less than quarter. I despise how much our media depends on numbers that the blur between gossip and news is dwindling further

</comment><comment><USER12> If cities can survive the Black Death they will survive this.

</comment><comment><USER13> The reality is that people independently could observe that they simply don't live in a nursing home.

The people that were [always] going to retreat to their at-risk parents house and chance infecting them already did so at the beginning of shelter-in-place.

We are talking the most compliant people, the polar opposite from the "its just a the flu" folks, they all independently observe the risk profile after most of the vectors for dangerous spread left.

Not an endorsement. Good luck!</comment>


Dutch antennas unfolded behind the moon - <AUTHOR> https://www.ru.nl/english/news-agenda/news/vm/imapp/astrophysics/2019/dutch-antennas-unfolded-behind-moon/ <comment><USER2> Why would you put antennas behind the moon?

I read the article: these antennas are radio telescopes (or perhaps just do the same job). So they're using the moon to block interfering radio signals from Earth.

<comment><USER3> > We have the opportunity to perform our observations during the fourteen-day- > long night behind the moon, which is much longer than was originally the > idea.

And from the sun.

> The moon night is ours, now.

That probably sounds less creepy in Dutch.

<comment><USER4> "De maan is nu van ons" ;-)

<comment><USER3> This reminds me of another instance of Dutch hubris:

[https://beeldbank.rws.nl/MediaObject/Details/Monument__Hier_...](https://beeldbank.rws.nl/MediaObject/Details/Monument__Hier_gaan_we_over_het_tij__de_maan_de_wind_en_wij_406285)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The satellite is in L2. More details in [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05231-9](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05231-9)

<comment><USER5> Self nitpicking: It's the Earth-Moon L2, not the Sun-Earth L2. Even more info [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how the antennas "unfold".

Are they perhaps nested rolled cones of thin metal?

<comment><USER7> I found a video of the Dutch team testing the 'unfolding' mechanism used in the NCLE. It looks like a spool that unwinds.

NCLE antenna deployment test - 25x: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hca3MeX-8rw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hca3MeX-8rw)

Web page with video: [https://www.isispace.nl/projects/ncle-the-netherlands- china-...](https://www.isispace.nl/projects/ncle-the-netherlands-china-low- frequency-explorer/)

<comment><USER6> OK, I get it.

It's like an extreme version of metal tape measures. Which are ~flat when rolled up, and then curve enough when unrolled to become ~rigid. But in this case, they seem to become almost cylindrical when unrolled.

I know that it's likely an old design. It's just that I know nothing about satellite design.

<comment><USER8> Some early Amateur Radio satellites (Project OSCAR) literally did use silver- plated steel tape measures.

[http://www.rfcafe.com/references/popular- electronics/oscar-3...](http://www.rfcafe.com/references/popular- electronics/oscar-3-space-station-popular-electronics-march-1965.htm)

<comment><USER9> Many university-grade cubesats use tape measure antennas today. They can be easily stored during launch by wrapping them around the satellite body, secured with nylon fishing wire and then released by burning through the nylon with a NiChrome heating element.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This just reminds me too much of this movie: [https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1034314/](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1034314/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Anyone know how and why this Dutch/Chinese collaboration came about?

I know that ESA headquarters are in the Netherlands. Do they just have so much space funding they have to look outside of Europe?

<comment><USER12> The ESA collaborates with everyone all of the time. It's a great way to get the best instruments onto each launch opportunity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I appreciate the photos of the antennae. It's not a critical mission element, but photos do speak louder than words.

</comment><comment><USER14> [https://www.sciencealert.com/there-s-now-a-radio- telescope-i...](https://www.sciencealert.com/there-s-now-a-radio-telescope-in- operation-on-the-far-side-of-the-moon)

<comment><AUTHOR> At the bottom, it says:

> This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original > article.

But it doesn't provide a link to the original article: only to the main Universe Today website.</comment></comment>


IPhone/iPad apps are for making money and the web is for innovating - <AUTHOR> http://atomicrobotdesign.com/blog/general/iphoneipad-apps-are-for-making-money-and-the-web-is-for-innovating/ <comment><USER2> >There won't be any Googles or Twitters showing up first as an iPhone app.

That is so, so wrong. The ubiquity of smart phones means that a large portion of people have a networked, location-aware computing device with them at all times. If you can't think of a game changing app with that (especially adding background processes), then you aren't trying

Granted, most developers are just trying to turn a quick buck with a minimum viable product in the app store. Short-term utility maximization says that is what they should build. But there is room for ambitious projects that will change the way we live. All it takes is a developer with an idea and the guts to go big.

</comment><comment><USER3> Take a look at the Popplet iPad app. I think this would support most of the functionality of Microsoft Courier, but in a multitouch friendly way. It also needs a web component to be a killer app.

I'd say this is either real innovation, or at least the packaging of innovation for a larger audience.

</comment><comment><USER4> .. site appears to be down with database problems (???).

</comment><comment><USER5> "Error establishing a database connection" - pretty innovative.

</comment><comment><USER6> The title should have been:

iPhone/iPad apps are for Apple making money and the web is for innovating

Other people might make money too, but Apple will make money.

<comment><USER7> Enough with the anti-fanboi fanboism.

Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer: "Regarding the App Store and iTunes stores, we are running those a bit over break even, and that hasn't changed."

[http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/01/26/app_store_wild...](http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/01/26/app_store_wildly_successful_but_not_hugely_profitable_for_apple.html)

<comment><USER8> 'Break even' doesn't mean they aren't making money, right? All we can conclude is that they have structured their accounting to say that the amount they're spending on the stores (whatever that means) is almost as much as the stores bring in.</comment></comment></comment>


Who owns the real life billboards on Google Street View? - <AUTHOR> http://www.mobileinc.co.uk/2010/02/who-owns-the-real-life-billboards-on-google-street-view/

<comment><USER2> I think the key here would also involve the branding of the billboard: most boards have the board owner's branding along the bottom, be it CBS, ClearChannel, or one of the regional players. I can't imagine the board owners would be OK with having their brand listed next to board content they didn't clear or control.

</comment><comment><USER3> This may seem naive, but is this the most effective advertising?

The only use case for street view I have seen so far is Navigation at a deeper level than Maps and the "ooh theres my house" wow factor.

I fail to see how advertising on billboards in this manor is more effective than google adwords below the street view. To me it would seem more clearer and readable than a "photoshopped" (for want of a better word) advert into a photographed billboard.

<comment><USER4> For many scenes in Street View, the in-scene advertisements will be much more prominent that those outside the frame.

<comment><USER3> I agree that in scenes such as Times Square or Piccadilly Circus where there is a lot of advertisement real estate, this would be a more prominent solution, but for the vast majority of places (take for example a highway or some sort of country road?). A popup advertisement (I'm not in favor of them), as seen on YouTube or some Android Applications seem's more effective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> OK, so how can this be filtered? I wonder how much effort they will put into making the billboards appear "real". If they don't care too much then it may be possible to detect them automatically. Or maybe the best approach is to write a general filter that recognise and filters billboards whether they are modified or not.

</comment><comment><USER6> They could put advertisements wherever they wanted. They're not limited to piggy-back on real-life billboards.

Theoretically, they could cover the sides of buildings with advertisements, but it would kinda suck if all that augmented reality had to offer was advertisement everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER7> Why do any of the billboard owners have any say about what happens to photos of the billboards? If I take a photo of a billboard, can't I do whatever the hell I please with it, including photoshop another poster on it? Why is this even an issue?</comment>


Reddit, YouTube, and Twitch are taking major steps to crack down on hate speech - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-youtube-twitch-crack-down-on-trump-hate-speech-groups-2020-6 <comment><AUTHOR> I was very surprised yesterday to see that Reddit, YouTube, and Twitch all took major actions to censor "hate speech" all on the same day. I am personally against censorship from big tech companies, in large part because they control so much of societal discourse that such actions have the same negative impact in stifling expression as a government censoring speech. I also believe that the term "hate speech" is vague and has ever-expanding definitions, and it really just disallows dissent.

It seems like in 2020 these companies have all shifted from being more hands off to being very hands on. It's also apparent that the bans mostly impact one political side, which I think is proof of how vulnerable free speech is when big platforms are located in cities with strong political biases. To illustrate how far this has gone, consider that Reddit's new policy actually allows "hate speech" against majority groups ([https://reclaimthenet.org/reddit-hate-speech-majority- groups...](https://reclaimthenet.org/reddit-hate-speech-majority-groups/)).

Does anyone have more information about this sudden transition to heavy censorship from big tech? It doesn't seem like a coincidence that all three would implement a large number of noteworthy bans at once. Are these tech companies in coordination with each other in terms of which content they will ban and how they will time it? Is the strategy that media cannot possibly cover a large number of simultaneous acts of censorship?

<comment><USER2> It's all about the money. There's major pressure on large cooperations to boycott Facebook at the moment due to their position on hate speech, and many companies have joined the boycott. Companies have been taking looks at their advertising and it seems like major ad buyers have decided they don't want to have their ads shown on websites that allow this type of content.

I would guess the timing was the same, because a major ad buyer sent them the same message on the same day or they were all thinking about it and once one pulled the trigger they all felt like they had to/could follow suite.

I'm not sure I buy the argument that it targets one political side. Reddit's main ban yesterday was its most active leftist subreddit. The bottom line is these bans will target anything that hurts these companies' ad revenue.</comment></comment>