AmIFirstToThink

Google in China would have been a way for Google (and Western Democracies) to get the most current listing of what China is asking companies to filter.

Whatever China was not comfortable asking international companies to filter (it shows to others things that Chinese government is trying to control), would have been shown by google to Chinese users by default.

Question for the google engineers here objecting to filtered products in China... Is the right to restrict right to the outcome of ones labor after it is sold universal? Who else would you grant the right to restrict the fruits of their labor from being used by you if they don't agree with you on something that may be important to them?

Can a coal miner ask the utility company to stop electrical service to the parents of a google engineer residing in heartland? If no, why not?

Why can't the baker deny decorating a cake a certain way against their will?

If you are asking for a ethical right to deny basic things (internet search is just about there as electricity, food, shelter, emergency care), just imagine if all the things you depend on came with similar exceptions that excluded you from using it.

I would have imagined lot of googlers taking objection to blatant content/speech suppression on YouTube. But they are completely fine if it is their ideology winning as a outcome of a said effort, no matter the ethics.

The cost of creating artificial exclusivity, enforced by the state against natural human learning/discovering capabilities, is even higher.

File a defect log to the book of Genesis, assign it to original developer, the God himself.

Why are you surprised that humans are being humans?

Why can't you put trust into the fact that there are more people being good most of the time.

Internet tools should be like paper and pencil, opinionless. Pencil maker doesn't get to control what gets written by the pencil, a social media platform maker doesn't get to control what gets said on the platform. Only when legally required, the pencil may be seized; only when legally required a social media post be taken down.

If with the protection and power of USA we can't stand by the Freedom of Expression in the marketplace of ideas, we are doomed to get an authoritarian overlords.

This "I don't like this free and open internet" because my ideas are losing is very dangerous power grab.

I don't like Facebook either, but I actually very much like the part where they want to let people talk knowing fully well that what gets said would range from Nobel Peace prize worthy, to undesired, to wanting to burn the whole universe down.

Can you imagine Bic worrying like this about what someone might write using their pens?

Do you imagine the restaurant worker who served breakfast to the 9/11 hijackers having second thoughts about serving food?

Answer to Facebook's woes is to return to Free Speech with compliance with law enforcement if laws are broken. No proactive banning of speech with the fear that it might be illegal. Let the legal process enforce laws, Facebook should comply with lawful orders to take down content, but not before. Facebook should embrace bubbles. Let people chose the bubbles they live in and let advertisers choose bubbles that they advertise in. If a advertiser doesn't want to advertise in "self-defense" bubble, then any content tagged/identified/categorized as "self-defense" doesn't get ads from that advertiser. Make people explicitly aware that there are bubbles out there that they can choose to be part of, or choose to be excluded from, or choose to peek inside for just a bit. Make default no-login/under-age view safe i.e. at least 1k logged-in views where at least 20 people did not raise "inappropriate content" flag.

Free Speech, embrace bubbles, comply with law enforcement and that should make Facebook relevant again.

YouTube and Reddit should be like paper and pencil.

If I used paper and pencil to break the law, then it's between law enforcement and me, I would be super annoyed if the pencil refused to write what I want to write because the pencil manufacturer thought it might be illegal or just simply undesired.

What the Content Providers are doing is anti-thesis of neutrality towards ideas and the supporting arguments. If someone breaks the law using their platform then let the someone file a complaint and let law enforcement handle it.

Should the burrito truck ban you from utilizing the calories from the breakfast burrito if you intend to do some insider trading that morning? If the burrito place can't block you from eating, then why should YouTube and Reddit be able to block you from saying what you have to say?

Can't believe that the hacker news crowd was jumping up and down for months at a time for neutrality of packets as if ISP is going to stop you from saying what you want to say, but all the while Facebook/Google/Twitter/Reddit can stop you from saying what you say anytime they feel like it, and those advocating "Neutrality of service providers" are perfectly fine with it.

Can folks be little more realistic about what the real danger is?

Out packets are not threatened, our thoughts are.

Rampant shadow-banning on HN if you comment on immigration or terrorism or Net-Neutrality that the PC crowd doesn't agree to.

I am sure this comment will only be seen by me, only through this browser.

Peter Thiel or Sam Altman speak for free speech, yet HN comment auditors keep using their jurisdiction in deciding what is OK and what is not.

Lot of work that engineers do and then social operatives hijack the work and enforce their agenda on top of that engineering work.

I have no clue how they feel being American, operating on American soil, under the protection of American law enforcement, and at the same time stopping American people from having a discussion, that too after specifically creating a platform for that very reason... to have a public discussion.

This is same crowd that gets angry when ISPs want to kick out a packet that the ISP doesn't like, but are super comfortable blocking, hiding and in case of reddit even editing user's comments. How they are able to hold this cognitive dissonance in their head at the same time is beyond me.

I am sure nobody will read this but at least I said it. Hi, HN auditors, have a wonderful day full of opportunities to ban users and comments, enjoy!!!

Why should the society pay for your dream to have a chance to be reality?

Startups with few heads have taken down companies that had employed hundreds gainfully for life, only to be folded into another behemoth with all the evil intentions. Whatsapp acquisition by Facebook where they decided to look into messages for profiling comes to mind. Countless examples of startups being open to being bought only to leave the customers hanging dry for options.

Do you agree to keep cost of shipping same no matter the size of your account (shipping one container vs. shipping thousands a month) so that some dreamer logistics graduate can compete? Would you pay to keep it fair? How about a pharma grad and keeping things equal against big pharma? Should you be taxed to pay for FDA approval process of every drug that a pharma student comes up with?

I am for Net Neutrality because doing otherwise turns paying customers into a product, and that goes against the contract. As an ISP customer, I am not willing to be made inaccessible by someone that I want to talk to, specifically when I am paying for that access.

At this point I am more concerned about Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/Google's ability to discriminate against people, than Comcast/TimeWarner/Verizon/AT&T's ability to discriminate against my packets. The later is hypothetical, the former is an everyday reality.

Freedom of expression is more important than cost imposed on buying the paper to write your expressions on. Net Neutrality is fighting over ability to write what you want on the paper you bought without the paper manufacturer consenting to your writing. Doesn't happen with paper, doesn't happen with packets. But the ability to show your writing on the paper to other people, their ability to read what you have written is being undermined, tampered with without repercussions, daily, every second of the day by Facebook/Twitter/Google/Reddit.

Net Neutrality is not the fight of the day, the battle cry is Freedom of Expression, fight against censorship imposed by Facebook/Google/Twitter/Reddit/YouTube.

Occam's razor:

Viking raided silk traders travelling far, or raided people who had access to those traders, traders who were either wearing or selling the silk cloth with pattern.

People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It’s the media that doesn’t.

The problem is Google/YouTube, Facebook, Reddit and Twitter are behaving like media companies of past century. They wasted no time in doing that. Amazon + Washington Post is perfect example of bridge from one to other.

May be it would take Silicon Valley (creative minds not necessarily located just in few zip-codes in CA) to take down the giants that are Google/YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, or at least make them behave.

Reddit leadership team must be made to stand in front of photo of Aaron Swartz for one minute each day and be reminded of the cause. May be, just may be then the love would return.

while failing miserably to focus the election of issues that actually matter

They failed? They decide what they should focus on, or should you decide for them? Who gave you the judge position? Care to take any efforts into claiming that judge position? Why should I or they grant you that? They, or I, should change our ways because you don't like it? What argument you have to claim that people didn't focus on what they should have in voting for Trump? I see that as a supremacist statement. May be he would have won with bigger margin, if they had really paid attention to what was going on.

This is only really true if you frame "democracy" as being whatever America has been, at any given time. The extent to which American security and prosperity have anything to do with democracy is debatable.

:s/democracy/utopia

You get the idea. No description of utopia other than in the utopia Hillary was president. Well, I reject the thought, as no argument was given. I quite like America and would rather live here than any place else. All are free to leave America if they don't like it. If you propose changing America, you wish alone is not going to cut it, put up an argument.

I am quite aware of Lawrence's work, and have supported/appreciated it. Above comments were a response to that article, not an attack on Lawrence. I am sure he can defend himself quite well, if he happen to read it.

Just like it failed to deliver so far for humans, it would fail for the AI world.

All three approaches only work if one accepts them, and then goes on to implement them all the time, for all the decisions made. Not possible, hence evil in the world. Hence conservatism is correct. I have been wrong all my life. Any philosophical means to achieve a better world that assumes good humans being good all the time, or even most of the time, is doomed to fail.

I think we as society have lost the ability to give the kids a creative space, that used to be a mile away from homes where they can play in the sand and bushes and water, and just be kids, without adult supervision. Video games let kids experience creation. Video games are satisfying an evolutionary need.

I think nautil.us should write an article on positive effects of mobile phone connectivity. The snobs are looking down on that just like they are on video games.

It gives you a chance to put yourself on the shrink couch in the privacy of your room. You get to know yourself little bit more. You know how flimsy the safeguards are for you to not do the wrong thing. Laws, religious ethics are flimsy to stop you from doing the wrong thing. You realize that at the end of the day, it is up to you as the individual, to do the right thing in a situation. Playing GTA makes you a better, responsible citizen. If GTA makes someone violent, then GTA is acting as a filter to weed out mental health patients early on, before greater damage is done by them.

We are missing something essential to the DNA of a functioning democracy, and it’s not obvious there’s any way to fix it.

Chasing Utopia, while not having answers how to get there, and for that matter even not knowing what this utopia looks like.

This is just I don't like what happened so let me see what could have made it not happen, that's all. Let me rearrange the world with no regard to how messed up it would get.

As exemplified in...

It’s not clear American democracy can survive commercial media

He could have gone little more meta and said It's not clear if humanity could survive humanity. American experiment is longest surviving thriving experiment of democracy, security and prosperity to date. We are not going to change because you don't like the results. This election worked despite commercial media, it shows that American democracy is surviving and thriving. Any proposal to "fix" the situation must come with enormous proof of it working, and at reasonable cost, and with no significant downside, otherwise we would rather keep what we have, thank you very much.

And the picture of Clinton as policy-wonk-in-chief is both compelling and again, tragic. This is her central feature: How is it most have no clue about this bit of her character?

The problem was Americans became too aware of it. Libya and Syria was her to own, and what it did to Europe was colossal failure as a policy-wonk. North Korea became what it is now on her watch. She should have lost with greater margin on that basis alone. I see this as not enough people paying attention.

Her problem was not that not enough people knew her record, but that she had lot of record for people to judge her for, and they found her not only lacking, but disastrous.

Overwhelmingly, they believed their “representative democracy” was corrupt because it did not “represent” — at least them. And yet the campaign did nothing fundamental to address this fundamental fact about us.

"it did not "represent"" is wrong way to look at democracy, instead of people selecting professional representatives from Dems or Reps to represent issues that they themselves are not convinced of, the people chose Trump to represent them. At the end people won, campaigns lost, it was beautiful to watch. And I thank Trump of giving the people that, and as Michael Moore professed "it felt good".

That blindness leaves the field wide open for the party of no — no taxes, no immigration, no health care, no (more) social security, no protection for privacy, no network neutrality, no family planning, no dreamers.

No arguments offered. Just take this and shove it down your throat, because that's the world they want to live in. Do I have an opinion or not? Do I get to hear why this is good for me or us, or not? Why are these the axioms of Dem platform? Why should I accept them?

If we fixed democracy first, we might create a world in which the wisdom of the wonks could be heard again.

Democracy needs to be fixed because Clinton lost. Is that the argument here? This just got ridiculous.

Does Lawrence, as a wonk himself, thinks that if Democracy is fixed then he would get better audience to his wonky thoughts?

Did it occur to him that making people see things your way may be one of the basic skills of being a wonk? A skill, which he himself has compared to others whose thoughts get no attention from anyone. Like this comment here on hackernews, lol. Trump had this skill in heaps, and he made it count. Glad he did.

Long live America.

It's guaranteed that you would be tracked.

GoFundMe?

Patreon?

Those who could find people to buy what they are producing, are already doing it on social funding platforms.

The models that are struggling are those who are not able to sell what they have to sell... a product that not only sold ad-space but infoticles, just like infomartials on TV or product placement in movies, there was paid bias in articles. In the days of Internet, no body wants to watch ads, not in the sidebar clearly labeled as an ad, or in the center of the page in terms of a info(ar)ticle.

I would rather pay to hear the bias of the person speaking, than letting a corporation tell that person what he or she can or can't write. There is banding together of like minded people to pool resources together to keep making progress on a cause, much better model than a corporation. Much efficient use of funds, time, energy. The only one to loose is the investor or influence seeker, who would have to do much more digging than just walking into an top floor office with a check in hands.

Caddy HTTP server is a history repeating itself like Ext-Js. It is quite sad.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15237923

It would be foolish to think humans would be different because they happen to be in space.

Yeah, the first ones to look at earth from outer space had an mind altering experience. I am sure the few who flew in first airplanes had similar story to tell, but now we complain about service while flying.

We would just get used to being in space, and keep doing what we do best, be humans and have conflict.

I want earth treated right, people on earth treated right, space escape will only bring out worst from people.

And you just hope that they AI that's sustaining the human life on Mars, doesn't like the AI taking over the earth.

I think having a backup of humanity would make world leaders to be more dangerous with their decision making, destroying earth in the process. Why, they have backup of humanity in outer space.

And after disaster on earth, they try to restore the backup and realize that restore is not going to work. Any DBA will tell you stories of failing restore and the dread that sets in when that happens, it does happen.

My worst fear is that in space we would realize that humans need a certain bacteria in our stomach to develop brain or to just be humans, and our last colony-wide anti-viral shot killed those bacteria's, and that bacteria only is found in cow's milk, cows that eat grass on earth. And then that's it, end of story.

I think the physics of space exploration can be worked out, biology is not going to be.

I think humanity is not ready to be multi-planetary. Time or distances or conditions are not on humanity's side. Even humanity is not on humanity's side.

I think the dreams of being multi-planetary are similar to buying doomsday bunkers in New Zealand. I see it as a desire to escape the problems of earth.

I would ask a question to Anjum Choudhary, "If there is a colony on Mars, and your ideology got hold of major countries on Earth, would you try to convert those on Mars?". I think the answer, undoubtedly would be yes.

Humanity has much to resolve on earth, if we go multi-planetary before we reconcile then all we would end up doing is make our problems multi-planetary.

Unless few people escape earth and destroy earth so that there won't be anyone following them. Equivalent to you first going into a safe bunker and then nuking the world, wait out the nuclear fallout to emerge. But then you would be pure evil.

I don't know if they have thought this through. On the scale of centuries, not quarter ends, all they are doing is working for those with higher rate of reproduction.

Yeah, try convincing 8 billion people that we should all hunt for rabbits.

Case against Civilization is case for extinction of all animals 6000 years ago.

I would rather be living now and enjoying this earth, than be someone who thinks that he can take on the wild if there weren't as many other people around.

And I don't think "human" become "humans" because things were just swell. Precisely because of evolutionary pressure humans evolved. I would rather have us evolved than not.

WeChat employs people in China.

We do? What kind of racist thing is that?

And, of course, it's not E2E encrypted; just the opposite, you can assume that it's being wiretapped/monitored.

Whatsapp is not? Are you sure? I would assume NSA doing all it wants as well.

Whatsapp is out not because it can't let authorities audit it, but because of other economic reasons.

This is for people with no dating prospects.

At no point the person wearing this jacket would ever be going hand in hand with a date, because her hands would then trigger the tech in the jacket.

a tap .google.com?

There will be no tapping going on with this jacket on. That's for sure.

The best they do is manufacture.

The kids growing now in West have lost ability to tinker.

If you are into electronics and manufacturing, China is like playground to experiment. In the west, we are losing rights to fix the gadgets we own.

Whatapp employed 55 employees when it was sold for 19 billion.

Banning whatsapp to get local competitor which employs local talent, is actually better for China from poverty point of view, isn't it?

They can still watch youtube videos about molecular biology all they want. The numbers don't really matter in that regard. And why would Google care if whatsapp is banned? Facebook didn't care that google search was banned.

Banning Facebook would actually give a boost to their productivity, not much to lose there.

And that's supposed to offend them? how?

What makes you think Chinese are after making others follow them? I think they are pretty happy with the way things are now.

Do you think that's what we are after? Making others emulate us? That sounds racist to me.

No innovation in entertainment means culture safety means prolonged rule of the party.

You are just confirming their logic.