Not at all, that's why we have moderators. Hacker news is interesting because they stay focused on the right topics. If you let people just talk about whatever they want, you're just gonna get an inferior Reddit. Topic != "Whatever we want to talk about", the topic is very often the technical and technological aspects of a story or article. Talking about politics on HN is definitely "off topic".
“There has long been a concern [facial recognition] could invade upon people's lives through expanded surveillance and through the criminalization of just existing within the public sphere,” Mamdani said.
Except, nobody is calling the regular fare paying people criminals. Just the people who aren't paying the fare and breaking the rules.
I feel like dismissals like this always lack imagination, you can't think of any uses for facial recognition surveillance that pegs you at specific locations at specific times? You can't imagine a single way how to monetize that data and use it against you or other law abiding citizens?
People said the same thing for social media data collection and now first degree price discrimination is getting more common. It's a total lie that it's only "people who are breaking the rules" suffer consequences with tracking and surveillance.
Just to note, everything is rosy right up until another MTA profit conversation and suddenly how can we monetize literally everything.
Also facial recognition is error prone enough that I'm sure a few people will get harassed by the system constantly flagging them. When they're not evading.
And evaders might wear a reflective hat or something making them invisible to the cameras.
> "you can't think of any uses for facial recognition surveillance that pegs you at specific locations at specific times? You can't imagine a single way how to monetize that data and use it against you or other law abiding citizens?"
Having imagination has nothing to do with staying on track and sticking to the conversation topic. Nothing you said has anything to do with criminalizing law abiding citizen for just existing. Privacy rights are a related but separate topic. We could talk about that separately if you want to. But I don't see how AI knowing where we are, or how AI enabling the monetization of our data has anything to do with criminalizing anything I do on a daily basis.
Right, but you could theoretically say this about any software or technology (and this argument has very frequently in the past been used to argue against technologies like cars and airplanes). DNA sampling has "flaws" and "bugs" in it too that occasionally lead to false positives. Even police officers and lawyers falsely identify people occasionally. AI technology would just be another tool we collect evidence with for use in making inferences about the world. Imperfect technology never has been a blocker for using or improving that technology until it meets its purposes.
This is a really poor argument. You are equating banning one social media app with the GFW, which is obviously a huge hyperbole which has nothing to do with reality. The Great Firewall operates by checking transmission control protocol (TCP) packets for keywords or sensitive words. That is a violation of freedom of thought at the infrastructure level. As an American, you are still free to visit Chinese hosted websites and drink whatever propaganda you want. You just can't use TikTok to find it anymore.
Plus, freedom of speech is about protecting American Citizens from being censored by American Government. Banning an ungovernable, foreign owned business does not stop you from freely expressing yourself on the internet.
Your education was not a lie, but you should still get a refund on your failed education. You clearly did not learn to think critically.
>Plus, freedom of speech is about protecting American Citizens from being censored by American Government. Banning an ungovernable, foreign owned business does not stop you from freely expressing yourself on the internet.
As far as I know, tiktok's services are deployed on Oracle servers in the United States and are subject to supervision.
It was banned just because it comes from China. Look how many times the CEO of Singapore was questioned if he is Chinese. Maybe the Congressman thinks Singapore is also a part of China.
> Look how many times the CEO of Singapore was questioned if he is Chinese. Maybe the Congressman thinks Singapore is also a part of China.
74% of Singaporeans are ethnically Chinese. The Congressman's questions are not unreasonable in questioning if the CEO has some ties with mainland China.
> Your education was not a lie, but you should still get a refund on your failed education. You clearly did not learn to think critically.
I read both Chinese and English, and I read both the opinions of within GFW and without. If anything, I've critically analyzed every idea from both sides. I can't fathom the hubris of someone who has ever lived on one side yet believes his truth is the ultimate truth and anyone disagreeing must not be thinking critically.
Here's my take on your recent comments, as a mainland Chinese who immigrated to the US 10+ years ago. There is no point arguing with other mainland Chinese online. I guess this is true for most online arguments but particularly so for debating politics with other Chinese since they are far too influenced by propaganda to be convinced otherwise. Furthermore, if you find yourself arguing with friends who can't even tell the blinding difference between Chinese censorship of the Internet (with zero transparency, against CCP's own constitution) and this legislation (passed by both houses of democratically elected representatives and signed into law by elected president), it is time to move on and make better friends. Good luck and hope I don't meet you in real life.
China is preparing a wat with Taiwan, just see it's military buildup the last year's.
It's ignoring international laws with neighbors, instead of using weapons, it's using water cannons against fishers and Philippines coast guard.
China is a "friend without limits" of Russia, who started a war on European soil lately.
I think it's safe to say that the west is decoupling from China.
It has nothing to do with "freedom of speech", most voters agree with that decoupling.
I have never heard of a pro China argument before from a politician party and it seems that most democracies nearby China think the same, even with the BRI initiative.
I'm not debating that China is bad or not, or if it is an adversary to the US.
My deeply held belief is that we should allow speech from even the most hostile foreign countries. Do you know that every administration of China, starting from Qing Dynasty, resisted the idea of freedom and democracy by painting them as plots of foreign governments to destabilize China?
I am being called a sock puppet of China here, and I have been accused of being agents of US propaganda in China. That is how the future holds. Every thought deviating from mainstream is labelled as propaganda from a foreign government, ergo not subject to the protections of freedom of speech.
I'm not calling you a sock puppet of China here, your username indicated a Chinese background though.
The tracking/propaganda dangers of TikTok are unrelated to freedom of speech, as banning TikTok doesn't affect freedom of speech.
People can spread their opinion on any other app.
Note : I'm responding and sharing my opinion for the following you mentioned:
> The China's own social media is full of posts ridiculing people like me who have believed in the American ideology, espoused the virtues of freedom of speech and rallied against the GFW. They call us naive and credulous. And I can't refute them.
I say that you're not thinking critically because your arguments are very weak and you don't provide any inference or evidence to support your conclusions. It's irrelevant that "you read both Chinese and English" or that you think "you've critically analyzed every idea from both sides" if you're not using any of those in your logical argument, which you're not. In fact, it's an obvious logical fallacy to use "I have read more about this than you" as evidence that you're right.
Say what you will, but I won't be able to espouse the virtues of freedom of speech in China anymore. The distinction you make isn't going to convince any one.
>Say what you will, but I won't be able to espouse the virtues of freedom of speech in China anymore.
The real reason you can't "espouse the virtues of freedom of speech in China" is because they will arrest you. Let's not mince words here. The Chinese government would shoot their citizens before they would let them protest or speak their mind freely.
No, they don't arrest people for such abstract concepts. They do arrest people who tangibly threatens the government, like exposing the shenanigans of high officials, or organizing labor protests over the Internet.
Haha, you would think that these cases count as enough evidence for the government not to have any power over speech. Nope. The Chinese people just oppose those specific cases, and in a small percentage of them, the government reversed course and then the masses are satisfied.
After those happened, they still think that the government intervention of speech is a good idea. The only problem is that a small group of officials not handling the regulating power correctly. But if they were to adopt the American model, how could they be protected from the evil influence of foreign adversaries? You know, like me, an agent of US propaganda. Or Tencent, whose major shareholders are actually not Chinese.
I really can't maintain a straight face hearing Americans repeating that same argument.
Nothing you can't do before has been affected, given that you were never able to post anything on TikTok that would be seen in China. It is not accessible in China, as Bytedance only operates Douyin there. The two systems are completely separate content-wise.
I don't follow your argument. In what way are you affected now and why? My understanding is that 1. You moved from China to the US yourself willing since some time ago and 2. There is no US equivalent of the GFW and this legislation doesn't change that.
I just don't see how this law will affect your ability to converse with others on Chinese social media.
OK, let me reword. I still can converse with others on Chinese social media, but I will have a harder time convincing them that GFW is a bad idea or that the China's government is wrong restricting speech. Because people not already convinced will point to the US banning TikTok and ask me how China's actions are different. The distinction between the two is subtle, and frankly, while the US actions do not violate the First Amendment, it does breach the underlying principles. I have no convincing argument for them.
Ok, that's more clear on what your point is. The US is not banning TikTok technically like the GFW, they are just de-platforming it so it is no longer commercially active.
This is very different from the GFW, and many orders of magnitude less restrictive.
This issue isn't about speech and censorship, but media ownership. These rules has always been in place in many Western countries precisely because of the impact it has on society (even beyond geopolitics).
That's true, but when I had a hard time convincing them when the US were the *perfect* model of no speech restrictions, it's much harder when US is just less restrictive. They will just dismiss such difference in quantity as cultural difference, rather than different principles when China and US had qualitative differences.
Yes, I understand your point, but it is also moot, because even with the first amendment in the US, Free Speech is not absolute. There are limits to freedom - i.e. the right for you to swing your fists ends at the tip of my nose.
If we talk about law, that is probably true. But for the principles, I don't think so.
We want freedom of speech because we can never know that our opinions are the ultimate Truth, so we need to ensure that everyone can speak their mind, and so can the real Truth be propagated and preserved. And that everyone includes foreigners and foreign governments.
Every time China's governments (including the past ones, like the Qing Dynasty) rejects the idea of freedom and democracy, it demonizes them by painting them as plots of foreign governments trying to overthrow and destablize China. So you can see why I am so wary of the argument that it is OK to silence the words if those come from a foreign government.
> Oh yeah, but we can easily spot propaganda/bias from CCP from miles away.
The same way how the Chinese people can smell the propaganda of capitalist reactionaries.
I'm being sarcastic. You share the same school of thought with CCP.
Also, TikTok has never intolerant. CCP is quite intolerant of its own people's views, but it strictly segregates TikTok and Douyin to avoid trampling on the toes of non-Chinese. Therefore the argument of "tolerance of intolerance" isn't applicable.
> Is it acceptable to correct the answer to the query "Eminent scientist" from 95% men, 5% woment to 50%/50% or to the current ratio of men/women in science ? Should we correct the ratio of black to white people in answering a generic question to average across the globe or US ?
I would expect AI to at least generate answers consistent with reality. If I ask for a historical figure who just happens to be white, AI needs to return a picture of that white person. Any other race is simply wrong. If I ask a question about racial based statistics which have an objective answer, AI needs to return that objective answer.
If we can't even trust AI to give us factual answers to simple objective facts, then there's definitely no reason to trust whatever AI says about complicated, subjective topics.
I agree. For specific historical figures it should be consistent with reality.
But for questions about broad categories, I am personally fine with some adjustments.
> I would expect AI to at least generate answers consistent with reality
Existing services hallucinate all the time. They can't even do math reliably, nor can you be reasonably certain it can provide actual citations for any generated facts.
The longer I remain a software engineer the more I hate relying on computers. Maybe the people closest to the technology are the ones to first realize how superficial and downright damaging these innovations actually are.
I'm kind of with you. In line with the article, its more the application of computers that's the problem - instead of making the world a better place, its a more distracting place.
Is it really worth it shuffling digitized crap around at high speeds if the outcome is a worse human experience because we're only applying it to the low hanging fruit and therefore creating a slippery slope for ourselves...?
The irony is that escaping into a simpler VR world with less distractions can help you deal with this, but I don't think its the right move.
I'm also reminded of Lee Felensteins quote from Steven Levy's Hacker's book. "You're doing all that for the computer!? What are you doing for the people!?"
Computers are nice. The issue lies with the kind of software that are being developed. I have a Kobo device that I put koreader on and it's miles better than the default one because it's actually let you read books how you want to read them. Most of the apps I have focus on being the tools for the use cases I have them for (which is why they are still installed) instead on trying to get in my way every now and then. I love nice visuals and other UX niceties, but I like usefulness more than anything. Some days, I'm really close getting back to my Arch installation. I'd prefer the glitches and do patches instead of suffering another enshitification.
> It’s a bit nonsensical to compare the number of words in English to the number of packages in PyPi, but we can agree that both English and Python are very rich languages, and no single person can reasonably understand the full scope of either language.
If I were editing this article, I would tell the author to remove the entire paragraph leading up to this snippet. Why would you insert a section that's so bs that even you immediately criticize your own point?
Truthfully, I read this article and came away with the conclusion that writing code is nothing at all like writing prose.
It's way, way more than just a tool that improves thought. It's a necessary tool to organize your life. How can you even budget or use a credit card responsibly if you don't know algebra? You need algebra to know how long a paycheck can last you.
My dad didn't graduate high school and even he knew enough algebra to work out how much money he needed a month for cigarettes (until he eventually quit once he really thought about the numbers).
That's a good question. Historic human societies without algebra somehow had working bean counting.
Using a credit card isn't very abstract.
You only have to use the concrete specific values in your situation, and not solve some generality.
Moreover, I don't think I had to ever square anything, let alone, cube, when reckoning over credit card transactions. Or find the roots of a polynomial, or do anything with polynomials.
I'm not saying that the intuitions gained from algebra are not relevant, mind you.
To use a credit card responsibly you need to understand the concept of exponential growth, or you might accidentally turn a manageable $500 debt into a burdensome $5000 debt. Same goes for understanding good debt (mortgages) vs bad debt.
It might not be solving a polynomial per se, but I don't see how you get to understanding exponential equations without at least understanding algebra.
There is understanding the concept of exponential growth, and there is being able to manage it. They are two skills. Where management is helped more by having resources than it is by understanding it.
>Where management is helped more by having resources than it is by understanding it.
There are many examples of lottery winners, athletes, and celebrities who came across considerable resources yet still went broke because they didn't understand how to manage it or the concept of exponential growth.
A fool and his money are easily parted, as the saying goes. People who don't have financial literacy will lose their money over and over again regardless of how much you give them.
There are, but there are also plenty of examples of lottery winners, athletes, and celebrities that came across considerable resources and then lived quite well on said resources. Probably more of those, but the stories are far less dramatic.
You are also picking a category of people that come across enough resources that make them a target to plenty of others. Such that it is almost an adversarial game, at that point.
>Probably more of those, but the stories are far less dramatic.
Evidence shows that having an excess of resources actually leads to more financial irresponsibly, not less. Or as the Illustrious Notorious B.I.G. eloquently put it: "mo money, mo problems":
"The CFP Board of Standards says nearly one-third of lottery winners eventually declare bankruptcy, and lottery winners are more likely to declare bankruptcy within three to five years than the average American."
I love that that evidence actually supports both of us. My claim was that more people that win the lottery do fine than otherwise. Your own evidence is that 2/3rds of them do so. You are focusing on that fact that 1/3rd of them declare bankruptcy, which is higher than the general populace.
That is to say, yes, you have to rack up some bad debts in order to declare bankruptcy. The kind of debts that just aren't possible for most people.
And this is ignoring the selection bias that almost certainly exists here. Buying a lottery ticket is, basically by definition, not a savvy financial move. That it basically works out for 2/3rds of the people that do it speaks to the power of additional resources. :D
The vast majority of lottery winners are not of the instant robber baron generational wealth level. "1/3 of lottery winners" has to be qualified with what the minimum payout was that we're talking about here because obviously a lot of lottery winners are exactly the sort of people who are going to be living paycheck to paycheck, or even in such dire circumstances that they are likely close to bankruptcy anyway. A 50000 or 100000 or even 500,000 dollar/euro lotto windfall is likely to exacerbate their fundamental problems rather than solve them.
I'd argue that you're not really using the credit on your credit card as a credit card. You're using it as a charge card.
Exponential growth is a fundamental concept of financial literacy. If you want to invest in the stock market or plan your 401k it helps to understand exponential growth. The reason why it's impossible to get rich off a wage is because of the difference between exponential vs linear growth.
>I don't spend money I don't have.
You've never taken out a mortgage or opened a margin account? Plenty of responsible people make money by spending money they don't have every day.
Sorry, yes. I do spend money I don't have, just not in the context of credit cards, as they have terrible interest rates. I go to the banker to get a loan.
When it comes to spending money on credit, you need an intuition for running sums. This lets you maintain an estimate in your head tracking how much you charged on the card.
People without that intuition are surprised at how fast the little charges added up to an unexpectedly large sum.
But I only spent a hundred here or there; how did it blow past $4700?
The CMF was designed by people who don't like math and prioritize the "human experience" over physical reality. When you read through the CMF, you begin to see all sorts of hints that their ideology is inspired by Continental philosophies such as Marxism, Existentialism, and all of the other ways of thinking that find "facts" and "reality" offensive. For example, I lost count of how many times they mentioned the word "authenticity" in the CMF.
To sum up the whole CMF in my words, it's Critical Theory applied without critical thinking used. Proponents saw that minorities were struggling in math class, so they proposed a solution to handicap math classes. That's literally what CMF is. Proponents would rather see everyone fail than some people succeed. Especially if those some successful people are not minorities.
Why we should learn math from people who clearly have no respect for facts and reality in the first place is beyond me. Bertrand Russell, one of the founders of set theory, would have outright rejected most of the philosophy that inspired the CMF.
Existentialism is hardly anti-reality, and for that matter, neither is Marxism. It kinda sounds like you're just repeating things you've heard without reading the sources.
A linter or IDE can only "suggest" that you don't access null objects without a null check. You as the developer can choose to ignore the linter or IDE and write bad code anyway.
Enforcing behavior via the typing system prevents bad code from even compiling and running in the first place.
When you stop thinking of Optional<T> as a inconvenient wrapper clumsily wrapping a T and starting thinking of it as a first class datatype with its own members and methods, then it becomes a lot more clear to reason about the logic.
