Yeah very creepy, I'm afraid it'll be normalised in a few years, together with the cameras in our glasses.
I always knew this was coming eventually, with storage and compute getting so cheap, eventually every record can and then will be saved for security / convenience reasons. Every word uttered, every emotion shown on your face, every URL visited, every view you laid your eyes on.
I will miss the days that things could happen and be forgotten.
No doubt this stuff is all very useful, but I'd rather we skip this line of technology.
‘… but contrary to what a regular person may think (that this level of data gathering is unusual), privacy experts know that it’s not, it is standard practice’
This is correct, it's monetisation, not commissioning.
Facebook isn't paying to produce. It's paying for driving views and clicks on ads, regardless of how.
It's like if I hire a taxi driver to come to my house and drive me to the airport, and the taxi driver happens to run over a person in the process. It would be ridiculous to write 'he hired a driver to run over a person with a car'.
However, this also doesn't fully capture the reality of what is happening.
Let's say I routinely get a taxi, and taxi drivers routinely hit people because I happen to have a policy where I only pay them a large sum if they get to the airport impossibly fast, and the fastest way is to drive dangerously. Suppose I notice that every time I get a taxi, someone is run over because of my payment incentives. Suppose I then write a statement that says I will not pay the taxi if they hit a person. Suppose it keeps happening anyway, and I keep paying anyway. And suppose I benefit directly from this financially, because getting to the airport faster saves me money in missed flights.
Suppose I then do this on a worldwide scale involving many millions of people and create a market around this of tens of billions of dollars, suppose it's having a significant effect on public health and safety worldwide?
I think it's fair to then use more explicit language to hold me to account. I am financing death and destruction after all, even if technically I'm 'just getting a cab'.
As a US citizen who takes our country’s free speech norms seriously, I don’t think Meta should be aiming to deplatform even the hateful content I vehemently disagree with.
I think government should work more on helping people find alternatives to social media. The “town square effect” that makes people feel forced to use these apps is real and pernicious. That feels like a better target for regulation and taxation than content. If your business moat is based on network effects, perhaps there should be the equivalent of a land value tax on your network.
I think there is a distinct difference between deplatforming content, and simply not monetizing it. You have the right to shout in the town square but I do not have to put money in your cup when you do it.
I find those advocating for censorship of right wing voices to be pretty unconvincing, and often acting in bad faith (like this article and its cherry picking)
Reddit and Blue Sky are almost entirely left-wing rage-bait and conspiracy theory content these days, and they amplify such content right to the top of the default feed, yet you rarely see the right calling for these platforms to censor their users.
If the right can learn to tolerate different opinions that they find offensive, then it’s reasonable to expect the left to do so as well, without resorting to these contrived cancel culture talking points.
The vast majority of political violence and riots in the US these days is orchestrated by left-wing movements and individuals. The assassinations of Brian Thompson, Charlie Kirk the attempts on Trump, all the riots surrounding BLM and George Floyd etc
Obviously directly inciting violence is not acceptable, but cherry picking obscure instances of it, while simultaneously overlooking the far larger problems that exist on the left, is bad faith. The threads celebrating the murders of Brian Thompson and Charlie Kirk are some of the most shared Reddit posts of all time, with zero self-reflection from the left about this double standard.
> If the right can learn to tolerate different opinions that they find offensive
Ah look, it's the hallmark of well-reasoned thinking. I have seen this exact phrasing numerous times over the past week, did the bots learn a new talking point? "The right" sure is doing a lot of tolerating around abortion, trans identities and women's bathrooms and sports.
Or break the companies up like we did with Bell. Any social media platform with over 20 million MAU in the US gets broken in two, and companies with over 1M MAU must offer open federation under some reasonable terms.
I suppose you are not at the end of the hateful content. It's easy when it's a group, but how small does the group have to be before they should deplatform it? 100k, 10k? 1000? 10, 1? Is one person okay? If I and a bunch of fellow idiots publish rubbish about you and you alone attacking you on facebook with our fellow 1,000,000 followers, would you still vehemently disagree with facebook deplatforming the hateful content?
Business is not bound to any sort of freedom of speech. There is no such thing, it does not exist. The first amendment covers government actions only.
If I owned a social media network, I wouldn’t let Nazis, MLM peddlers, transphobes, pro-gun advocates, or anti-vaxxers, among others, on my network. That’s where my moral compass lies.
Now, you might say that’s unfair, that’s not an open forum. I’m not being open-minded to other ideas or freedom-oriented.
You don’t have to agree with me. Go use someone else’s product.
The thing is, Zuckerberg has uniquely overarching control over Meta in ways that most public companies don’t. He has controlling special founder’s votes, he is the guy in charge, equivalent to a dictatorship.
That means that anything Meta allows on their platform is a reflection of Zuckerberg himself. Whether or not that’s how the eyes of the law views it is very different than how it is from a moralistic “who is responsible?” angle.
Zuckerberg can stop all hate and anger on his platform in one business meeting. Plenty of other platforms (public and private companies) including HN don’t allow the kind of conduct that Facebook and Instagram allow wholeheartedly.
He chooses not to hold high standards for his platform because anger, fear, snake oil sales, and purposeful disinformation campaigns, among other shady business ventures, are profitable.
And here we are, debating whether he and his company are responsible. After all, they just provide a neutral platform, right? If I get hit by an Amazon truck, it’s not their fault, that was a subcontractor! Companies enthusiastically create these mechanisms to detach themselves from the harm they bring.
I think you may be misunderstanding the post. He is not saying that Meta is prohibited from censorship by the First Amendment.
He is saying that the US has free speech norms (not laws) where it is acceptable for people to get together and rant about X, Y, or Z. There are limits (e.g. calls for violence), but they are few. Anyone who does not like the speech can leave the room, try to argue with the speaker, or make their own speech in another room. It is not the social norm to shut down the speaker, make the speaker unemployable, trash or bankrupt the venue, etc. Those actions are contrary to the norm.
That is simply not true. One example is a hilarious skit by an Australian comedian (John Safran) going to salt lake city and knocking on doors asking if he could talk to people about atheism. The amount of violent threads he received is quite revealing.
In my personal experience having lived in the US and several other countries, I found officially people can say much more things (i.e. due to the strong freedom of expression laws), but in personal settings you are much more likely to be shut down, fired, threatened with violence, ostracized... for stating unpopular (in that social environment) opinions, in the US compared to the other countries.
Meta is a private organization[1]. It is not “the US.” In fact, most of its customers aren’t even in the US.
Private organizations dictate their own social constructs. It’s not acceptable to proposition sex at a book club, but it’s acceptable to do that at a swingers club.
This idea that private companies follow the social norms in the US is only partially true at best.
It’s socially normal for me to talk about how my company sucks and I hate my boss with 100% of my friends and family, but doing so at my place of employment isn’t okay. That’s one major example where my company doesn’t follow social norms.
If what you say is true then YouTube should allow hardcore pornography since over 90% of men watch pornography. It’s socially and legally acceptable, with numerous legal brick and mortar businesses specializing in that market. But they don’t allow that because they are a business that doesn’t want to engage in that business activity.
I think it’s easy to mistake the current state of private social media as “open” in the way you describe just because it looks open. To your point, not a lot of speech is banned outright, which seems parallel to US social norms, but whether or not something is banned or removed from social media is almost meaningless because promotion and multiplicative reach is the domain of the algorithm.
The algorithm doesn’t promote and multiply the reach of content based on whether that content is most aligned with social norms. It’s promoted based on whether it makes money or causes users to stay watching the platform.
In real life, you don’t hang out with your friends and family most who make you the most mad or generate the most shocking content. But that’s how social media works because social media isn’t real life.
This idea that today’s social media platforms are a neutral vessel for speech is flawed right from the start because of that algorithm.
[1] publicly traded, private as in “private property”
Facebook wants to get that speech in as many rooms as they can, because they figured out a way to profit off of the emotional reaction of the people who were already there. They offer free hosting for community groups of all sorts in order to bring people to the rooms they can profit from.
Thank you for this poignant allegory - its so spot on - it will really open some people's minds here who are overthinking and rationalizing their current Big Corp employments.
They put you in several opposing camps. They identify the most insane content and show only that to everyone in the opposing camp.
No one cares if you clean up after your dog makes a nr 2. The anti dog poop people want to hear you don't give a fk and let Herman poop wherever he likes.
Similarly the dog owners don't want to hear you understand. They want you to talk about little poopers getting stuck in your barbed wire with razorblades.
Wasn't my experience, frequencies are fine but I don't think it's unbeatable at all. The default simulation is 50x speed by the way, perhaps that gave you the impression.
Based on... What exactly? The Dutch rail network is already considered the busiest network in Europe. So I'm really interested what knowledge you bring that says that it could be busier if many experts say that the busiest trajectories (look at Amsterdam - Schiphol and Amsterdam - Utrecht, for example) are at max capacity already.
Upgrading to full ERTMS can increase capacity on the Utrecht Amsterdam line. Longer platforms with longer trains. Reducing accessibility in the trains* for more seating. Less seats. Removing first class. Remove train crossing. Buy out NIMBIES. There is plenty you can do to increase passenger capacity on that line.
*) If you want to absolutely maximize passengers in a train you can reduce the number of toilets to one or switch to the peebag system the old trains had. And reduce the amount of wheelchair spots to the absolutely lawfully required amount. I’m not saying this is a good thing, just spinning some ideas to increase passenger capacity.
Japan beats Dutch train frequencies, hence it's not unbeatable.
And if you include metro rail there are plenty of more frequent rail systems including again Japan but also China, France, UK, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea.
Here was mine, I thought it was very good. My prompt was: reinvigorating the desire for work after a sabbatical.
AI below ----
Six weeks into my sabbatical I was genuinely thriving.
Week seven I started narrating my own grocery runs in the style of David Attenborough.
By week nine I had developed a parasocial relationship with the pigeons outside my window. I named them. I had favorites. Gerald was getting too big for his boots and I resented him for it.
My therapist suggested I "find structure." My mother suggested I "get a grip." My accountant sent a single email that just said the word "savings" with no other context.
The thing that actually pulled me back wasn't a TED talk or a journaling prompt.
It was a documentary about competitive Scrabble players — specifically the 1999 North American Scrabble Championship — where a retired postal worker named Marlon Hill drove fourteen hours to compete, placed forty-third, and described it afterward as the best day of his adult life.
Forty-third.
He was beaming.
Something about that broke the spell. The sabbatical had convinced me that returning to work required a perfect reason. Marlon just needed a reason.
Gerald the pigeon watched me update my LinkedIn profile from the windowsill.
> Does the radiant heat not increase the room temperature, thus affecting the indoor temp sensor? C
Yes but the temperature of the air in your home is only one part of it. The other part is the temperature of the radiant heat.
I always understood that the temperature is measured in the shade, and that the difference between shade/sun on a sunny day can be very significant. A temperature of 22 degrees in the sun would feel like standing in the shade at 30 degrees.
Similarly in your home it could very well be that the air is your house is heated up to 22 degrees by the outside air and radiant heat, but additionally if you're under the radiant sun sitting next to a window it can feel much hotter.
Of course if the temperature meter itself is exposed to the radiant heat, it'll likely measure that directly. But mine for example is mounted under a table in a utility corner and gets virtually no radiant heat. I could mount it next to the window to get exposure to the radiant heat of the sun, but then if I'm sitting further away from the windows in the room I get no radiant heat but the sensor does, and it'll think the room is a lot hotter than the experience I'm having.
I love the idea of hydro/aquaponics and built a system as a student more than a decade ago. It’s a fun project.
But as a form of agriculture it’s a spectacularly bad idea at home.
This setup is about 1 square meter of NYC space, that’s about $18k. Meanwhile agricultural land goes for about $2/m2, or 9000x less. Then you spend $700 in parts to set up the 1 square meter, even if you put the system on cheap rural Kentucky land. Then you pay $170 a year to power the system for again, 1 square meter.
Meanwhile the 1 square meter produces like less than $100 in annual produce.
Green house farms like in the Netherlands have perfected this growing method and it’s quite effective. Home food production is a joke by comparison just like home anything production of a commodity product.
So fun DIY projects but as a serious way to grow food it’s terrible, not economical or sustainable. I tore down my project the same year I built it, taught me a lot but made no sense to continue.
When you buy a couch, are you thinking "will this couch offset the value of the square footage it occupies" or "will this couch be comfortable and match my décor?"
I'm glad someone is doing something fun in their home.
I, too, bought a couch I could afford. It was new, but it was a cheap one. It's blue.
When I bought a couch, I had a budget. What I didn't do was walk into the store and ask myself how this couch is going to pay for the square footage it occupies. It won't. It can't, that's not the point of a couch.
By the logic in the top comment, nobody should own a couch because it doesn't generate money that would offset the cost of the space it occupies. That's my issue with the top comment.
Nowhere in the OP is there a suggestion that they are doing it with the intention of saving (or earning) money. Nobody, no matter what their means, buys a couch because they think it will behoove them financially to do so.
OP made an aquaponics thing because they wanted to. I bought a couch to sit on it. God forbid.
And on that note, buying something cost-optimized to your space is itself a mark of privilege. My first couch was the nearest free one to my home, since I didn't have a car. It was much too big for the space I put it in. But it's what I could afford, which was nothing.
There is a dollar amount I am willing to pay to elude suffering- and there is an amount I will not. Try sitting on a floor for weeks and you will see the dollar amount you want to pay for a couch. And try booking a long haul flight- see what is your dollar amount you’ll spend to get more leg space.
Yep. I initially looked into it as a potential avenue for sustainably producing some of my own food, but the math absolutely did not make sense.
Growing a bunch of potatoes in a barrel would be a lot more bang for your buck with that goal in mind. To really optimize costs and labor, though, as you say, you need a greenhouse and/or a big old field, just like always. There are no small-scale shortcuts. Not yet, anyway.
It makes me a bit sad that even with modern tech we haven't really made it much easier for people to produce their own food. But it's a reminder that our food production requires large scale collaboration and cooperation. Maybe that's a good thing.
There are a lot of cool growing technologies but it’s really hard to beat the sun and rain and soil on cost. Once you go inside you have to provide the medium, the energy via lamps, watering system and all the micro and macro nutrients. Gets more expensive naturally
As a small farmer, I will tell you that, without exception, home-farmed food is immeasurably better than the food in grocery stores. Appearance, taste, nutrition are all superior to store-bought equivalents. Cost is the only metric where store bought food wins.
Yep. I grow around 1/3 of my food and most of my produce in the warm months. I have put a lot of effort into selecting flavorful varieties and making a flavor assisting soil medium. I cook based on what is available at the time.
It's a lot of work and not terribly cost effective (if you count labor) but it's also fun work.
But the real payoff is the quality of the food and it feels kind of weird sometimes, like, I'm not uber wealthy, I'm not a movie star nor famous person and yet this is possibly some of the highest quality food available I'm eating. Flavor and probably nutrition as well.
I made this eggplant parmesan last night and everything in it but the salt and oil and breading was from my garden. The tomato sauce, the herbs, the garlic, everything. All fresh picked that day. It's unbelievable how delicious it was I really wish I could share the experience.
Store produce seems like a ghost now, like this faint shadow of the taste produce should have.
100% with you on the taste and nutrition. I think you forget sustainability at scale. I love the idea of eating local food, but with current levels of personal productivity and home-farmed food costs, there is no way it could work for all of us.
It's very fun as a process and it's cool to be surrounded by things you made. We're so disconnected with where things come from (food, clothes, etc) that for me and people I know it's interesting to be involved and see how the process goes even to produce a token amount of whatever it is. I grow my own herbs and cherry tomatoes in homemade cedar planter boxes, sewed my own kindle cover, am sewing replacement covers for my very old patio furniture cushions that I got used, my fiancee knit me some socks and has made sweaters for herself and a few family members, another of our friends sewed an outfit for herself, etc and it really is just fun to do.
It also is nice to be a little more self sufficient, not just in a prepper way, but in the sense of not having to get ripped off by some corporation or feeling bad having to buy something new (ie replacing my cushion covers myself instead of buying fully new cushions)
1. Tomatoes off a vine crush anything in a u.s. supermarket.
2. I eat unwashed basil leaves and other greens growing outside, I eat them by first putting them under my tongue, my seasonal allergies (I am allergic to everything but mold) have plummeted over the last 3 years of this. The folk remedy of farmers market honey did nothing for me.
I did sublingual drops a decade ago and there was moderate improvement but for medical reasons I can't get a prick test again and I haven't been able to find a provider that will just make drops for me based off my original prick test.
It's impossible to find what plants capture the most environmental allergens on leaves or in edible flowers so I just have a collection, I figured that made more sense than licking a swamp cooler.
Anyway, I've gone from taking Allegra most days to only 2 months out of the year.
The idea of self sufficiency either from individualism or associated with a sense of "being prepared" is enticing. But growing something yourself is also cool in itself. Watching a plant grow, eating the tomato you grew tastes better than the one you bought.
If seen as a hobby it isn't more pointless than 3d printing dragons.
I think the problem is that a lot of soil here in the US isn't up to the quality of other countries. It may be tastier and healthier to eat imported tomatoes than ones that we even grow ourselves.
It gives you a sense of control, for one. I could repurpose existing software to do most of the things I program myself on my own time. Ikea is way cheaper than most things you can make yourself, but you end up planning around commodity furniture instead of getting furniture that fits your plan.
An inordinate amount of the benefits of specialization is sucked up by middlemen leaches and enshittification is very real in the physical world too.
A lot of "specialization" looks more like enforced helplessness where the world around you seems to be full of mysterious magic outside your one specialty and often your specialty is very many levels of abstraction away from anything obviously useful to an end user (i.e. some brand of navigating office bureaucracy).
Many things aren't actually all that hard to do yourself nor do they take up all that much time or energy. And there are many things which aren't actually possible to distribute to end users so what's possible by yourself is so much more than what's possible to sell.
So... This is more comparable to a guppy tank than a farm.
Generally, yes you are right. Home farming (eg vegetable gardening) generally isn't economical. That doesn't mean it's not valuable. Besides being fun... I do think home gardening some resilience to the food system.
Aquaponics is, in general, not really a viable commercial method. Or rather, the plants are just a filter for the pinds...not a true secondary product.
By this logic, doing anything yourself is inefficient and a waste of time.
However, I think that by reducing it purely to a monetary number, you are not measuring things correctly. Part of the output of doing DIY things is the knowledge, experience, and fun that comes from doing it. If you insist on putting a dollar sign on that, I’m sure it ends up being much more equal.
People seem to think you’re attacking the article. I read the article but know nothing about aquaponics otherwise, and I was wondering why we don’t see it used more. So I appreciate you sharing your knowledge on the subject.
So probably 99% of the users are clicking directly to the comments and upvoting the inane GP comment to the top, and the “no one reading this” is actually almost no one.
The article itself is clearly just a hobby learning fun project.
It's less about the square foot economics for at-home, and quite often the time to travel between growing space and home, if in the case of an apartment, it was somewhere else.
I always knew this was coming eventually, with storage and compute getting so cheap, eventually every record can and then will be saved for security / convenience reasons. Every word uttered, every emotion shown on your face, every URL visited, every view you laid your eyes on.
I will miss the days that things could happen and be forgotten.
No doubt this stuff is all very useful, but I'd rather we skip this line of technology.
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