Credit cards: prepaid can be detected and blocked, same as the privacy.com ones - especially when the credit card is being used to validate something. Look at any major fraud prevention software, these things are trivial.
In the real world, if you want to make money, you need to show and prove ID with matching banking details. Any inconsistencies and you don't get paid. This isn't something you can outsmart. People smarter than you and I have been thinking very long and hard about these points, much more so than the two minutes you took to think up your post. The idea is like those videos of 'primitive underground dwellings with a swimming hole on top'. Cute, creative, but terribly impractical and useless in any real world situation.
Yes that is correct. I am thankful I have other means of income meaning I don't need to model for a cam site.
> Creating a fake ID = super illegal.
Agreed. But if I'm at the desperate stage where I have no choice but to sign up to a cam site, I would prefer taking that risk than having such PII leak many years in the future and affect my career prospects (the article mentions some of the data being up to 20 years old - most of these people now have no doubt left the scene but their new life can now be screwed up by this data leaking). Neither is a good solution, but IMO the risks of the latter outweigh those of the former.
Regarding prepaid cards, yes I know they can be detected and blocked, but is there any incentive to do so? It makes sense for a performer to want to protect their privacy, so I don't see why the site would block these cards?
It's actually not always illegal to create or possess a fake ID. It depends on the state and what you do with it. Some states it's illegal always. In California though as an example here's the law:
> 470b. Every person who displays or causes or permits to be displayed or has in his or her possession any driver’s license or identification card of the type enumerated in Section 470a with the intent that the driver’s license or identification card be used to facilitate the commission of any forgery, is punishable by imprisonment in a county jail for not more than one year, or by imprisonment pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170.
You have to have the intent to commit a forgery. This is defined elsewhere but means to use the id to commit fraud.
So you have a novelty id that says your name is Mickey Mouse and you are 100 years old. You show it to your friends. Or maybe you get one as a gag gift for a friend. Not illegal in California. Using a fake id to misrepresent your age for legal purposes such as buying alcohol, tobacco, firearms, voting, acting in porn? Very illegal.
This works. And I do it. Too many unhinged people out there. Here in the US, I've found things in restaurants a couple of times and pointed it to the staff.
It clears the liability for all involved, since no one can claim that the staff or a fellow patron 'took it'. It was pointed out by a customer and removed with witnesses. I generally mention it to more than one staff.
I try to baseline assume that the person I'm dealing with in public is not fully there (which would include the property owner). It makes it easier to deal with when it is actually the case.
Having read the article, it seems they are concluding a causality that isn't necessarily there.
The whole study is based on: there's a correlation between advertising spend per capita and life satisfaction between countries in Europe.
Now that COULD mean advertising is making people unhappy.
Or it could mean that people who are less satisfied tend to buy more crap and when people buy more crap they get more advertising. It's not as if advertisers are stupid.
The researcher in the article even admits to this being a one off with no other studies backing his claim. Now what's more likely, he discovered something no one else has, or he misinterpreted the data?
I wish yours wasn't the only comment talking about this. It saddens me to see articles like this, where causation is imposed on correlation. Everyone "knows" correlation doesn't imply causation, but they only seem to know it in the sense of a student reciting it. They don't apply that knowledge critically.
A single study of two things as complicated as advertising measurement and happiness/satisfaction, and the intuitively compelling conclusion is immediately embraced as the truth because it's "obvious."
Edit: Again with the downvotes...come on HN. I'm not defending advertising, I'm criticizing the reporting on a study in a world which has a rampant replication crisis.
The funny thing is, the most up voted comments on this topic don't even seem to be about the FA. They are mostly just 'generic advertising is bad comment/anecdote related to the title'.
Another idea I had after reading the article is that advertising is more pervasive in big cities. From what I can recall, big city inhabitants tend to have a lower life satisfaction rating than smaller town dwellers. So countries with more urban dwellers might normally have more advertising and less life satisfaction... because big cities, not necessarily advertising. Also richer nations tend to be less happy, and by being richer have more advertising. There's a lot of ways to interpret the data.
It's funny to see the group-think dynamic on display needed to make non relevant comments go up and comments related to the article be down-voted (which aren't even stating anything specific... you and I never even said 'it's this' just questioning 'maybe not that')
Another super interesting thing that I glean from the down-votes is the bottom down view only when convenient.
If you post on HN that tech companies are evil and conspiring against our privacy, people will say (IMO mostly rightly BTW) that it's mostly bottom up, with consumers CHOOSING bad options. But as soon as advertising comes in the mix, now the world is top down, with evil marketeers manipulating the masses anyway they want.
To all the down-voters: your boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes you cheer!
You're also confusing something: that plenty of legal things are not socially tolerated.
If a company came out saying 'sorry, we don't hire feminists'... they might... face consequences. Even if that is legal.
Right now U Haul is going after an easy target, since most people hate smoking - but the idea that just because it's legal it won't have any consequences is silly.
Companies can be boycotted, they could get grilled in congressional hearings, new laws can be passed, and because of incendiary behavior they can get scrutiny for the non-incendiary behavior (see Shkreli) and other negatives can happen.
The law is supposed to codify what makes sense, and when it doesn't, it many times will soon. Many times that includes nailing someone to the wall to set an example.
I hope enough people call their lawmakers to pressure the system into dragging the U Haul executives who made this decision through the coals. This 1984 style 'we are going to see everything you do' is getting out of hand.
Maybe, but the problem is that smokers cost the company a lot more than non-smokers, due to this country's strange expectation that your employer should subsidize your health insurance.
If we didn't have this idea that your ability to afford health insurance should be tied to full-time employment, then this shouldn't be an issue. But I can see that companies have a very good argument for discriminating against people who willingly choose to harm their bodies and incur higher healthcare costs. If we as a society don't want companies forcing their will on employees for things they do off-hours, then maybe we as a society should change the way healthcare insurance is handled.
>Maybe, but the problem is that smokers cost the company a lot more than non-smokers, due to this country's strange expectation that your employer should subsidize your health insurance.
This gets dangerously close to validating discriminatory hiring against any negative health markers. Do they start tracking your BMI next?
And what's wrong with discriminatory hiring against negative health markers? It's perfectly legal to discriminate in other ways: employers are absolutely allowed to fire employees who are incompetent, for example. They're allowed to administer tests to job candidates to see if they're competent to do the job. There's all kinds of other things they're allowed to discriminate based on (like "cultural fit"), as long as it doesn't look like they're discriminating based on a "protected class" (race, sex, religion, etc.). "Negative health markers" are not a protected class. So why shouldn't an employer be allowed to discriminate based on BMI?
I will say, just because it costs them more money doesn't mean they should legally be able to act on that.
Many times someone from a certain religion might cost an employer more than someone who doesn't need religious prayer breaks. But legally employers can't act on that.
I'm not saying smoking = religion, but I am saying information available to make logical decisions != the ability to act on that information. Just saying we've already made the decision that we will legally restrict companies from acting on certain pieces of information and therefore we can expand this existing framework to protect other life choices (eating fatty foods, skiing hobby, driving a sports car, having kids, etc)
>Many times someone from a certain religion might cost an employer more than someone who doesn't need religious prayer breaks. But legally employers can't act on that.
They can't act on that, specifically because we have a law that prevents them from doing so. Religion is a "protected class" in employment, along with a few other things (race, gender, etc.).
Smoking is not a protected class, so employers are free to discriminate all they want. Do you really want to spend your time writing to Congress to have them pass a law making smoking a protected class?
>having kids, etc)
I'm not sure, but I think having kids is already a protected class. If it isn't, it probably wouldn't be that hard to get that law passed. Getting it passed for smokers would not be so easy. Personally, if Democrats took this up as a major campaign issue, instead of focusing on more important things, I probably wouldn't vote for them any more.
So neoliberal causes like LGBT issues and immigration really are a bigger issue to you than worker’s rights?
Democrats are, in my view, the worst party in terms of focus and connection with the average voter right now. Wages have been stagnant for 3 decades for everyone, and somehow this is completely lost on the party. Instead they are trying to get Trump re-elected by focusing on gun control as a wedge issue. Focusing on worker’s rights or really any liberal cause besides protecting classes would make me much more likely to vote democrat. Not that I don’t think that everything is fine on those fronts, only that I think women’s/LGBT/immigrant rights should take a back seat to things like wealth inequality, worker’s rights, and global environmental health.
There's over 100 pages of material here. Why has this been submitted? What's interesting in it?
These type of submissions attract the worst commentators; people who will talk about the topic based on what they can infer from a title. Mostly just rehashing some personal anecdote or curious fact semi-related to the title.
Not sure I want to invest so many hours of reading to get to why this was posted. Maybe the OP could provide some context?
So... you're upset about people who don't read the source. But you're also upset that the OP didn't provide a summary so that you could avoid reading the source?
I clicked through. Source material is about 200 pages.
Linking to a news article is one thing.
Linking to basically a book, without so much as saying why the book is good, is another.
I didn't say it was bad. Just asked the OP, why submit this? What's interesting in it? If I find the summary interesting, I read further. I also mentioned that when posting 200 pages without so much as a summary, most people won't read, leaving the less intelligent 'title commentators' (something I think is discouraged in this forum, which is why I participate)
I clicked through. Source material is about 200 pages.
Linking to a news article is one thing.
Linking to basically a book, without so much as saying why the book is good, is another.
I'm not relying solely on what the OP says. But I'm not spending hours reading through 200 pages to figure out what is being shared. I read a lot of books, but generally I'll read the jacket, then the intro, then maybe the first chapter, and if that grabs me, then the book.
Not sure why you are trying to imply that I only read summaries, but that's on you.
It has to do with the concept of government transparency. In the US, from what I understand, the founders of the country feared secret courts issuing secret sentences for secret reasons.
So the idea is that almost all government stuff is public information. It's why FOIAs are so powerful. Literally anyone can ask the government to open up it's docs on virtually anything as long as national security isn't involved (and this is abused, but to a degree only) it has to comply.
Now, such a tool will inevitably have good and bad. Just as having private court cases will also.
Personally I think we need to create a privacy reform similar to the Civil Rights act of 1964 to address this and many other concerns. I'm simply explaining the thought process where our current tradition came from.
Florida actually has much broader public information laws than the rest of the country. That's why you see so many 'Florida man' stories. My understanding is FL takes it a step further than just being public, they publish much of it by default, making it easy for reporters to sift through and find headlines.
The Florida laws are colloquially known as the sunshine laws. And it's not just public records. It also includes pretty much all meetings between officials, even informal ones. And it also includes judicial records, which is why Robert Kraft's defense cares so much about suppressing the video from his case.
I didn't read it. But for some of us, silly inane comments that don't add to the conversation can detract from it.
If that's what you are looking for, may I suggest reddit? On there, an article is posted and you'll have 10,000s of silly one liners with no information or further understanding. Most never having even read the FA. I personally love the fact that /. doesn't allow this. It means those of us who want to discuss topics can actually do so without drowning in a sea of silliness.
most comments argue a position, which doesn't necessarily build bridges either. good satire, even if taking a position, should be thought-provoking rather than simply insulting.
Satire definition:
"the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues."
From Wikipedia:
"satire is a genre of literature and performing arts, in which vices, follies, abuses and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, corporations, government, or society itself into improvement."
Not only is satire bad for communication, it's bad for learning, since it must presuppose the person creating the satire is not in the wrong. Generally people who are open to learning start from the perspective they too might be wrong. Of course, you are welcome to show me examples of when satire changed your mind... that would make me reconsider a different perspective.
but those are flat and lifeless definitions of satire. i'm delighted by good satire that points out my own as-yet-undiscovered follies in a wry or clever way. a lot of creative writing and philosophical works do this.
idea exchanged is neutered if all writing must be carefully crafted to not offend even a little bit. plenty of comments here offend others, even without that intent, but the best ones will (1) not target individuals and (2) make a reasonable argument. to me, satire is just adding a little cleverness to these latter kinds of comments.
in any case, i'm not imploring you to agree with me, just adding my voice to the chorus.
Great. Personally, I've changed my mind on some very serious topics: death penalty, addiction, government regulations, capitalism, etc.
In each case, it took someone patiently going over points to help me see better. It takes time for me to fully incorporate new world views. It was a process that required the patience of another human who helped me work through thoughts without judgement or ridicule.
In my case, satire did not help. In fact, it has generally made me double down on my perspective, since it has an inherently ridiculing tone (you might not agree, but that is so by the very definition of the word) - Most people I know double down when confronted with ridicule. In fact most people generally double down on their opinion no matter how thin the evidence in favor of it.
So I'm asking, what deeply held beliefs did you completely change your mind on when confronted with satire? How did it go?
Hearing people's actual experience that is outside of my common conceptions is always super interesting. I'm always open to changing my mind.
This isn't a first to market huge advantage. Developing the plants is slow (many years) and the lag between super powers in cracking tech is generally only a couple of years (see space programs/nuclear energy programs)
It's playing into divisive tribal thinking, when this is literally objectively good for everyone on the planet.
They definitely aren't, because we don't read everything that gets posted here, or even close to everything. There's far too much.
If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com.
Bringing that up in a thread about tokamak reactors would almost certainly break the site guideline against going on flamewar tangents.
I know that can seem arbitrary to people who have strong feelings on the topic, but it follows from HN's first principle: intellectual curiosity. We have had hundreds of generic flamewars about China. Will yet another one gratify anybody's intellectual curiosity? Of course not, because nothing new can be said about any of it. Everyone who cares about these arguments has already heard all of the lines and probably recited half of them. The only thing left to do is invent even nastier variations of the same thing. That's why flamewars get hotter as they become more predictable.
The root phenomenon is: we can have intellectual curiosity or indignation but not both. On HN, we choose curiosity. That means indignation needs to be actively contained, for the same reason that fire does.
If you want to see previous explanations about this, there are tons:
I hope they succeed. We desperately need to adopt nuclear energy world wide.
The success of such a project would pressure western governments into adopting the technology to stay competitive. Especially when the cost of a kilowatt hour plummets.
I sure dislike authoritarianism, but on this one I think everyone's interest are aligned. Anyone who isn't misinformed or sentimental will support modern nuclear. I'm amazed there isn't more unity here in the comment section; this is an objectively good thing for humanity. The advancement of science.
> I sure dislike authoritarianism, but on this one I think everyone's interest are aligned
This is a dangerous misreading. In environments without rule of law, you end up with constant redistribution of common goods based on personal political favor, leading to various roads fo nowhere.
It relies on the top person having a good sense for what to do, instead of institution building so that we can continue moving forward after the current generation of leaders has passed.
The main thing is resources are made available because everyone wants a great works project associated to their name. It’s good for large research projects like this, but it’s not a permanent interest alignment.
Yeah, at this point I've given up on the USA as an innovator in the nuclear field. China seems to be much less luddite in this field and AI, maybe they'll let us buy it off them as we become second or third in the field (and in science in general).
> China seems to be much less luddite in this field
If by "luddite" you mean "not building more reactors due to worries about cost and safety", then not really.
"though reactors begun several years ago are still coming online, the industry has not broken ground on a new plant in China since late 2016, according to a recent World Nuclear Industry Status Report."
"The 2011 meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant shocked Chinese officials and made a strong impression on many Chinese citizens. A government survey in August 2017 found that only 40% of the public supported nuclear power development."
"Within days of Fukushima, nuclear reactor construction in China was frozen. When building resumed months later, after a wave of inspections, Beijing insisted that future nuclear power projects adopt more advanced designs with extra safety features."
"The bigger problem is financial. Reactors built with extra safety features and more robust cooling systems to avoid a Fukushima-like disaster are expensive, while the costs of wind and solar power continue to plummet: they are now 20% cheaper than electricity from new nuclear plants in China, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Moreover, high construction costs make nuclear a risky investment."
Nuclear plants don't deal with peak energy use either. For the peak, you need a plant that can quickly regulate it's power output up and down to respond to demand. Nuclear plants only work for base load.
To me AI is machine learning. And the US is leading in that area, the forefront of which seems to be self driving technology.
Are there specific examples of cutting edge machine learning where China excels?
My understanding is they have IMPLEMENTED machine learning in an authoritarian type of way. But this implementation isn't innovative. There's no underlying tech improvement. Just the application of existing technology in a terrible way. We have the same face tracking, gait tracking tech. We just don't apply it en mass because of pesky human rights and such.
Yeah, that's not a concrete example of the SPECIFIC cutting edge area of AI that china dominates development of. At least I couldn't find it. I gave one for the US. I've yet to receive one for China. All I've seen is: "Look how known 'AI' can be applied toward totalitarianism. The US has none. We are at a disadvantage. " This is utter rubbish for reasons already discussed.
The Japanese government spent mega-bucks on a "fifth generation computer system", whereas the US government let it happen organically and had no real plan. History has proven the US approach to be correct.
Researching fusion is probably a great way to slow adoption of nuclear energy world wide.
It's always 30 years away and provides a permanent Osbourne Effect.
Research effective means of deploying low cost residential solar. Research means of decommissioning nuclear reactors and waste disposal. Research Thorium and Uranium reactors, work out the insurance problems involved.
The FA we are talking about is related to the completion of the construction of the first Fusion reactor by the end of this year.
Also, fusion has only really been seriously considered AFAIK since the 70s (yes theoretical research happened before) so not sure how you get to the 'always 30 years away' thing, which sounds like we had several cycles of Osbourne effect. Not to mention the word 'always' gives your post an 'all or nothing' type of feel which is generally characteristic of people in distress whose fight or flight mode is active, blocking more nuanced views.
You might be right that we are very far away and this is only harmful, time will tell, but I truly hope the breakthrough is here.
I think furthermore, not only is it fearmongering, it's actually wrong.
What the article calls AI is just machine learning. And America leads the way on this when it comes to cutting edge. Look at self driving cars.
It seems the article hinges on implicitly defining AI as adopting mass surveillance/freedom restricting tech.
In reality if America cares about winning the 'tech development war' (I think a better goal than the nebulous 'ai war') with China, it should be worried about improving it's education system. And working on reducing corruption (both in government spending and in private industry such as banking and health care) - In the end, it was education, freedom and efficiency that allowed the west to beat out totalitarian governments. Not the adoption of totalitarian systems of oppression.
Imagine the US trying to adopt the USSR's system to 'obtaining and classifying information' on dissidents since it was part of 'information technology'. I find the article to have a borderline fascist/anti-western-ideals of freedom undertone. Some people think in a way that seems to be completely lacking in the ability to learn from history.
"In the end, it was education, freedom and efficiency that allowed the west to beat out totalitarian governments."
What about the massive catastrophe that killed off tens of millions in the Soviet Union and devastated the country, while the US was left completely unscathed by comparison?
In many ways education in the Soviet Union was far ahead of the United States, particularly in mathematics.
Women were also far more equal to men in the Soviet Union, so in a way this is an example where there was more freedom in the Soviet Union than in the United States, since the roles for women in the US were far more restrictive and curtailed their potential to a far greater degree. The US was also one of the last countries in the world to outlaw slavery, and the lack of freedom that black people were suffered under segregation in the US had no equal in the Soviet Union at the time (though the USSR also had their own racism and discrimination against Jewish people).
The USSR suffered not just from a lack of freedom, but crucially from the concentration of power in to the hands of a highly paranoid and ruthless elite and secret police who killed tens of millions of their own citizens, along with a callousness towards the deaths of millions more in the redistribution of resources and the overhaul of society in a race towards modernization.
The USSR also had to face the efforts of a far wealthier and equally paranoid adversary that was determined to see it fail.
If there had been cooperation and mutual aid instead, if the USSR had suffered no worse than the US during WW2, and if it hadn't been saddled with bloodthirsty paranoid tyrants for leaders, the outcome might have been quite different.
3 ifs and one might. Let's see: If my grandmother was male and if she was catholic, she might be the pope. I only had to use two ifs to get to that one.
I'm really not sure what your point is.
Are you seriously arguing that overall there was more freedom in the USSR than in America? I just want to be totally sure I get where you are coming from. Because my post was the general freedom as in the literal definition of it: "the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint"
I said the greater freedom in America helped it win the cold war. Of course it is more nuanced than that. But that can literally be applied to everything and anything ever said - if someone said being outside jail is good or not being addicted to heroin is good... well its more nuanced... maybe someone would benefit from being in jail or from being a heroin addict... sure, but at some point you aren't really increasing understanding. You are just pedantically noting things that are obvious in a way that detracts from meaningful conversation.
It seemed to me you were arguing against my freedom point by trying to say America wasn't much more free than USSR. Since such a position seems so utterly disconnected from reality and history, I asked you to clarify your position, maybe I misunderstood.
I also asked what your point was, since I honestly can't see what you are trying to get at in the context of the conversation: should the US have more anti-freedom ML technology applied to mass surveillance and social control? Do you think that will help? Read the FA and opine, I'd be happy to hear a smart analysis. You seem to be able to do that, you seem quite smart. But picking at the edges of arguments without actually participating is kinda... detracting from the goal of conversation and moving towards ego boosting.
Also, even if you are smart, if I understood correctly that you honestly believe the USSR to be more free than the US in any significant manner based on the definition of freedom, then I'm not going to participate in this line of thought.
I've had a conversation once with someone I had just met. He mentioned 'dinosaur bones were placed there by the devil to trick us'. I asked if he meant it. With a straight face he said yes. You could say I laser focused on that, because after it, I never went beyond 'hows the weather' with him. He has every right to see it that way, I and many others have every right to think of him as slightly less 'there' and therefore avoid getting tangled with what we see as incoherent.
None of that works in the realm of reality.
Creating a fake ID = super illegal.
Credit cards: prepaid can be detected and blocked, same as the privacy.com ones - especially when the credit card is being used to validate something. Look at any major fraud prevention software, these things are trivial.
In the real world, if you want to make money, you need to show and prove ID with matching banking details. Any inconsistencies and you don't get paid. This isn't something you can outsmart. People smarter than you and I have been thinking very long and hard about these points, much more so than the two minutes you took to think up your post. The idea is like those videos of 'primitive underground dwellings with a swimming hole on top'. Cute, creative, but terribly impractical and useless in any real world situation.