28 ms·

Are we the baddies?

• sureglymop 1y ago
  How could it take a smart person until July 5 2025 to realize this? I think that's the most concerning part. Long overdue realization.
  • octo888 1y ago
    Is that a slight against the author? If so, how does publishing an article imply they only just realised something?
    • coldpie 1y ago
      George Hotz has spent his career[1] being a "useful idiot" for a series of hypercapitalist techbros, including Zuckerberg in the 2010s and Musk as recently as 2022, so it's somewhat notable that the scales may be falling from his eyes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hotz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hotz
      • octo888 1y ago
        Ah I'd never heard of him before
        • coldpie 1y ago
          Yeah, he got his fame in the mid-2000s when he found a vulnerability in the Playstation 3 OS and some idiot lawyers at Sony sued him for it. He parlayed that into a cool, anti-corporate hacker persona, and then got hired by the most powerful corporations and people on the planet to try to give their tech companies some cool hacker cred. It's honestly a pretty funny career arc. I don't dislike the guy, he found a way to get his bag, good for him. But he definitely got played by the pros.
          • georgehotz 1y ago
            Nice try. I worked at Facebook for 9 months and left (before vesting any shares) because I didn't agree with the mission, even back in 2012. I worked at Twitter for 5 weeks and left because I realized nothing was going to change (and the good food went away). I don't regret trying at either, but in revealed preferences, I've spent most of my life writing open source software, even if that's not what attracts most media about me. I know you think everyone is just trying to "get their bag" and that's the framework you see this in. But I already had more money at 21 than I've spent to date, and not cause I had a lot of money, but cause I don't buy much stuff. I'm sorry you feel played, but don't project that on me.
            • coldpie 1y ago
              Haha, no worries, you're good. But come on, you have to admit it's at least a little funny that the famous Sony/iOS/Android hacker geohotz ended up... working for Facebook and then Elon Musk's X, lol.
• ggm 1y ago
  For some people, paying the premium to jump the queue is the point. What they didn't forsee is what happens when everyone has wound up paying the premium, and the queue is now with you again. This is mostly Australian frequent flyers, when it was a high barrier to entry it conferred advantages and now Fly in Fly out work has commoditised club status, there is next to no boarding advantage, and no points flight availability. So yes. Status seeking, and differential price seeking probably is a-social as a pattern when it's weaponised against the consumer. That said, I hated Uber, they actually offered to underwrite people breaking the law to get foot in the door (how that didn't get them excluded as a corporate scofflaw is beyond me) and they continue to export all the profits offshore, but taxi services had become shit and now we have got used to Uber and I just don't worry about surge pricing. I got boiled slowly. My fellow Australians all feel a bit shit about the introduction of tipping in paywave and food service. That's unaustralian. We have legally enforced minimum wages and penalty rates. Turn that feature off. The European push to mandate included luggage in flight is seeing a fair bit of trolling. So there are still true believers who think needing clean underwear is weak.
  • anonzzzies 1y ago
    > there is next to no boarding advantage Especially on the discounters here in EU (especially Ryanair / Easyjet), i'm the only one in the non-priority queue, everyone else is in the priority queue. This used to of course not be the case; you paid extra and was in first. Now i'm usually in before 2/3th of the prio queue. Which is just weird. > about surge pricing. I got boiled slowly. Not sure how it is in the US (I used uber there on vacation in the past, but on vacation, I don't worry about prices too much), but here prices jump heavily during surge; often from 40->50->38 euros in a few minutes; I'll just keep an eye on the app for a few minutes and pick it at a good point. Taxis are almost always twice or sometimes (airport) 3x the price. I never take them as they are also often rude and I cannot rate them (these two are related). The last one I took was 3 weeks ago; I was 10 minute drive to the airport from some horrible 'business hotel' and I had an early flight, so I checked out, ordered an uber at 5am and waited; in front of me stopped a 'real' taxi (both are now legal and need licenses, but Taxi have Taxi on top); the driver got out to welcome his client which was not me but obviously he thought I was. We talked for a bit waiting for his real client and then he asked how much uber was; E15 I showed him. He said; cancel it and give me E15. Ok, so I got in front, the other client in the back. We arrived, and while waiting to park up, he shoved a terminal in my face with E15 on it, so I paid. We got out, he got the luggage from the other guy who asked 'how much is it'; E72,-. Cheers bro; made almost E90 for a 10 minute trip. Point being; hating uber (and I used to refuse to use them) is making your life very hard for very little benefit. The taxis needed a kick up the arse and they still didn't learn anything. Still need to order far upfront, their app sucks and far more expensive. Not sure how they can exist (of course I do, they don't know uber exists, how to use it or they refuse to use it). I find if you are with 2+ people, they are often cheaper than the trains which is quite mental really in a country where 'people should take the train if they can'.
• svnt 1y ago
  I find these posts primarily interesting as a sort of demographic heatmap. Like now it has gotten to the point where instead of only chasing their interest of choice (geohot hacking, in this case), this person has become aware of the issue, and been sufficiently motivated to write a post about it. geohot is pretty deep into the center of the map afaict.
  • delusional 1y ago
    I think this is what struck me as well. Hearing what I can only describe as radical anti-capitalism coming from George Hotz was not what I expected when I opened that link. That said I have felt the same feelings expressed by Hotz in this post. I commend him for saying it.
    • vasco 1y ago
      Shame they come together with casual references to burning it all down, ww3 to the rescue just because he couldn't get a hinge date fast enough.
      • TFYS 1y ago
        I don't think the kind of foundational change that is needed to solve these issues has ever been done in other ways. If it can be done, it's much harder than just letting it all burn down. The people at the top of any system are not willing to change it without a fight.
        • vasco 1y ago
          If you think "the people at the top" suffer the most during a world war you're deluded. If you're willing to do that because you don't like ads or because girls aren't replying to you on dating apps, no words.
          • TFYS 1y ago
            They don't suffer the most, but the point isn't to make them suffer. The point is to change the system. If the current system feels unfair or wrong in some way, people will want to change it. If the only way to change it is war, and if enough people want change, then war is what will happen. The war might make things a lot worse, but at least people are worse off together and are forced to take care of each other in a way that we haven't in a long time. The selfishness will be reduced, communities will come back, and a better system might be the result.
• bigyabai 1y ago
  > It’s not okay. Advertising is not okay. Price discrimination is not okay. Using big data, machine learning, and psychology to manipulate others at scale is not okay. Stop participating. Hinge is towards the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you'll do just fine without it.
  • palmfacehn 1y ago
    Collectivists generally start from premises which discount or even dismiss individual agency.
    • poorlyknit 1y ago
      This is a cheap overgeneralization.
    • salawat 1y ago
      And yet individualists reach to secure those network effects while at the same time decrying they don't exist or will never work, anything to deny the advantage of a network to competing agents.
    • bigyabai 1y ago
      Libertarians and revolutionaries often start from premises that overestimate their worth relative to millions of other ordinary people. Spend for two weeks in the woods, and you'll find out who brings you food when you're hungry (spoilers: nobody).
  • HeartStrings 1y ago
    What? Sex is a basic need in Maslow’s hierarchy.
    • bigyabai 1y ago
      Yes, and Hinge is not the sole human corollary of sexual intercourse. Ask your parents.
      • 1y ago
• emsign 1y ago
  I'm so sick of algorithms dictating choices for me. I just don't want to partake anymore. It's no fun anymore, my dopamine reservoirs get drained quicker now and I just want to drop out of this society that has been colonized by companies that hate us. The government hates us, the policies of the too rich are destructive and they hate us.
  • udev4096 1y ago
    Oh, so you're sick of it but unwilling to do anything? How about do something about it? I am glad to see the consequences of convenience that you all crave. It's just going to get worse. There is always a choice, whether you believe it or not. Opt-in and realize they own you or opt-out and don't be a slave
    • zbentley 1y ago
      I will, with trepidation and my expectations in the gutter, bite: what does “opting out” or “doing something about it” mean for you?
• lightbendover 1y ago
  [dead]
• mhb 1y ago
  "Price discrimination is not okay" Isn't this a reasonable way to achieve many desirable results? Hardcovers/paperbacks, watch a movie right away or after a few weeks, etc.
  • haveyoucinsdrd 1y ago
    Hardcovers last longer, resource use is real. Cheap things is a regressive tax on the lower incomes who have to replace cheap stuff faster. They can’t save for better stuff. When it comes to media like movies… really? Still? The resource use of Top Gun and Star Wars is bonkers. Can’t we just have local theater and you know socialize? Do we need the movie to come together and socialize over? I so thought we were done with that stuff around Spider-Man 3. MCU and Star Wars sequels made no sense to me. Is our attention always going to be coupled to Saturday mornings in 1990s? Boomers did all the drugs and made music and corny fun shows like SNL and somehow convinced us to stare at computers iterating on word problems like it’s fucking middle school while staring at these over the top delusions of grandeur to borrow from Han Solo.
    • quailfarmer 1y ago
      Paperbacks are _not_ a regressive tax. The book is equally readable in both forms, and often more portable in paperback. Hardcover books are (mild) luxury items that can command a higher profit margin and thus are easier for publishers to justify. Very few individuals are buying hardcover books in order to maximize utility over many decades
      • haveyoucinsdrd 1y ago
        [flagged]
        • StefanBatory 1y ago
          ?
  • georgehotz 1y ago
• dbtc 1y ago
  Who is the "we" in the title?
  • bravesoul2 1y ago
    Us. On HN.
  • specproc 1y ago
    Tech workers America Capitalists
  • archargelod 1y ago
    AI Entrepreneurs
• 8f2ab37a-ed6c 1y ago
  It gets even more disturbing when the algorithm (or a disgruntled former date reporting you to a tired and underpaid customer support agent overseas) decides to ban you from the dating apps and suddenly your chances of meeting someone go down dramatically (60% plus of all couples meet online in the US), with the apps having become the middlemen for most of dating connections: https://www.vice.com/en/article/banned-from-dating-apps/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/banned-from-dating-apps/ Good luck ever getting back onto the apps, especially if you've ever used facial verification to validate that you're you. Every future attempt to sign up again will be immediately blocked. No way to appeal. Dystopian.
  • cedws 1y ago
    Your destiny, and whether you’ll ever have a family of your own, decided by Match Group.
    • immibis 1y ago
      The business model of Match Group, by the way, for those unaware, is to buy every dating app (yes, they own all of them; Bumble was once the lone hold-out but not any more) and then do everything they can to make you pay money for premium. They do not care if you get a date.
      • cedws 1y ago
        It’s genius really. They’ve inserted themselves into the social fabric, hijacked it, and then used cartel tactics to take control of competition. And nobody cares enough to start an antitrust suit.
        • immibis 1y ago
          You described social media first, before dating apps.
        • bigyabai 1y ago
          Because 95% of us don't live on a computer, and recognize the potential to meet and court suitors at bars or social events.
• csours 1y ago
  Before you pay for boosts on a dating app, pay for good pictures. Here is what a man seeking woman profile needs: 1. Good Pictures. Honest. Good lighting. Appropriate grooming and attire (whatever than means in your social context). Smile in a carefree way in most of the pictures. 2. Attractive man in the pictures. 3. No icks. Yes the pictures are more important than being attractive. As a matter of storytelling, the theme is "aspirational", but the particular aspiration is up to you.
  • cedws 1y ago
    Or just stop playing the game. Like a parasite, dating apps only survive while their host is alive. You can pay for pictures, spend hours a day scrolling, pretend to be someone you’re not, blunt every aspect of your personality that may be an “ick.”Maybe you’ll eventually win if you keep pulling the lever. But then you’ve just contributed to the problem. It’s just not worth it in my view. I gave up. Being a singleton is going to become the new normal in the next 25 years, many Western countries are going the way of Japan and South Korea. The good news for George is he’s a high profile, decent looking, wealthy dude. He’ll be fine.
    • sat_solver 1y ago
      Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. I'm not talking about only dating apps. Wherever there's an algo, there's someone manipulating you. I just deleted and disabled my Youtube history. It's incredibly liberating!
    • imiric 1y ago
      Playing devil's advocate: embellishing one's own features is a common tactic for attracting a mate in the real world as well. Courtship is a game, not just for humans. During this phase you rarely get to know the other person. You meet their best facade first, and then slowly get to know the person behind it. If you refuse to play this game, then you're just lowering your chances of attracting a partner. Which is fine, but it's good to be aware of this. What GP is suggesting is simply making an effort to showcase your features. The most attractive person on Earth could be rejected if their pictures are of poor quality. That's just common sense. Being genuinely attractive by modern societal standards is important, but the first step is making an effort. Dating apps can be a good way of finding a partner. After all, they're just the modern equivalent of making the initial connection. Their problem is the same as with any SaaS: companies are incentivized to keep users on the platform for as long as possible, which they do by engaging in shady tactics like artificially controlling the visibility of user profiles, while squeezing out as much profit out of users as they can. This is bad news for men, who are overwhelmingly the ones using these services and are willing to accept the downright predatory tactics of these companies. But in theory, there's nothing wrong with the concept of dating apps. They're just corrupted by the usual user hostile incentives. A dating service with the right incentives could appear tomorrow to disrupt this rotten industry.
• afiodorov 1y ago
  We should not underestimate the timeless human response to being manipulated: disengagement. This isn't theoretical, it's happening right now. The boom in digital detoxes, the dumbphone revival among young people, the shift from public feeds to private DMs, and the "Do Not Disturb" generation are all symptoms of the same thing. People are feeling the manipulation and are choosing to opt out, one notification at a time.
  • alganet 1y ago
    > disengagement. That disengagement metric is valuable, I'm not gonna give it away for free anymore. I'll engage and disengage randomly, so no one knows what works. > The boom in digital detoxes, the dumbphone revival among young people That's a market now. It doesn't mean shit. It's a "lifestyle". > People are feeling the manipulation They don't. Even manipulation awareness is a market now. I'm sure there are YouTubers who thrive on it. --- How far can you game a profiling algorithm? Can you make it think something about you that you're not? How much can one break it? Those are the interesting questions.
    • notarobot123 1y ago
      The Algorithm doesn't care if you're illegible. How ever much you mess with it, you're still its plaything.
      • properclass 1y ago
        ineligible or illegible?
        • immibis 1y ago
          illegible. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State#Summary https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State#Summary
      • pdimitar 1y ago
        The algorithm still can't make me buy or read rage-bait. Of course the machine will never stop trying. But with results decreasing gradually with time, the human will get discouraged and will turn it off. It happens at places, btw.
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• 5350-uiop-1130 1y ago
  a lot of the economy seems like a game of value extraction to me boosts, uber fees, late fees, small order fees, busy hour fees...it's like this is what people spend their time thinking up when i see people stuck in traffic on their morning commute, i think thats a net positive for humanity in some small way
• politelemon 1y ago
  I went to the hinge website and drowned in the self congratulatory marketing... And I still don't understand what it is or what it is boosting.
  • krackers 1y ago
    >what it is boosting Their profits
• raincole 1y ago
  Really? Perhaps this person lived in a fantastic futuristic city before. But for a lot people, getting a cab was not a good experience. Uber singlehanded changed that. And dating apps are not middlemen for dating. They're middlemen for dating outside your social circle, which is always a mess. Whatever subscription you pay to the app per month is probably cheaper than a single drink at a bar anyway.
  • bravesoul2 1y ago
    You are right but now a single company controls this worldwide. I think taxis would have adopted apps eventually.
    • ljlolel 1y ago
      Nah even now the taxi apps are still shit
  • timeon 1y ago
    > Perhaps this person lived in a fantastic futuristic city before. But for a lot people, getting a cab was not a good experience. Uber singlehanded changed that. I've been in taxi just about three times in my life and zero in Uber. Usually just take bus/tram/train, walk or bike. Car for utility in the country. I think I do not live in fantastic futuristic city (it is in eastern Europe) but at least it is not dystopia.
  • jeffreygoesto 1y ago
    Right. It's the consistent lack of healthy social circles that is the problem for most people. Either it is staying afloat that sucks all your energy or focusing on "tech will solve problems" but it doesn't.
• dandanua 1y ago
  The $*99 prices in shops should have hinted you that we already live in a self-hating society. AI will make it x100 worse. But don't get it wrong - the problem is not with AI itself.
• bravesoul2 1y ago
  This makes me like George more. I also liked that he wants to reduce the NVidia monopoly by working on AMD. Simply because it's a monopoly.
  • saretup 1y ago
    I thought he gave up on that when he couldn’t get AMD chips to run for long enough without bugs.
    • ghxst 1y ago
      AMD just signed a 2 million dollar contract with them to get the new hardware on mlperf, so it looks like the AMD chapter continues. https://x.com/__tinygrad__/status/1935732517933613216 https://x.com/__tinygrad__/status/1935732517933613216
  • MuffinFlavored 1y ago
    If somebody as driven, successful, and talented as him is starting from square one in the realm of dating/having trouble finding a partner, I feel even more bad for those less fortunate/interesting.
• weare138 1y ago
  You want to opt out of this all you say? Good luck running a competitive business! Every metric is now a target. You better maximize engagement or you will lose engagement this is a red queen’s race we can’t afford to lose! I'm from GenX. It can be done. We used to do it. Just stop playing their game. The only winning move is not to play.
• jarofgreen 1y ago
  The title is a reference to a sketch from a UK show, That Mitchell and Webb Look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h242eDB84zY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h242eDB84zY
  • seydor 1y ago
    i m officially old now
    • xandrius 1y ago
      There no office for this, go and live youthfully however long you want.
  • jonplackett 1y ago
    Anyone who hasn’t seen this show - it is brilliant. Such clever satire. Dr Death is also a very apt take on modern technology https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Skl71urqKu0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Skl71urqKu0
    • hermitcrab 1y ago
      See also 'Bronze orientation': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyu4u3VZYaQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyu4u3VZYaQ
      • jonplackett 1y ago
        Thank you. That was marvellous
  • penguin_booze 1y ago
    Classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_4J4uor3JE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_4J4uor3JE.
  • veeti 1y ago
    This one is quite sad. But also hilarious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRbj1Q4tXNo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRbj1Q4tXNo
• mindwok 1y ago
  What the open web did for discoverability of businesses, we need to invent again for actual engagement with the businesses. Uber, Booking.com, AirBnB, ClassPass, Steam, DoorDash - these winner take all middle-men rent seeking tech behemoths are bad for society and are hostile to consumers and the businesses that rely on them. Let's decentralise this shit.
  • TFYS 1y ago
    It's not the centralization that's the main problem. Centralization of those services can make sense. It's how and why those centralized services are run. They're run like dictatorships, for the purpose of making the dictator and his friends richer. They should be run democratically, for the purpose of making the lives of the users better. Breaking up monopolies is just a temporary solution, because the systems of capitalism will always create them again. The underlying system, the how and why, needs to change.
  • aydyn 1y ago
    Everything except for steam, one of the few to do it right. Of course they arent perfect as nobody is, but in general they treat developers right, they treat customers right. Theres no personalized surge prices or other AI BS, and they dont ban randomly like google. If you buy a game on steam, you own it for real.
    • mindwok 1y ago
      True, Steam is better - I think it helps they aren't a public company. They still take a huge margin though.
    • immibis 1y ago
      No, Steam is still in its (unusually long) first phase of enshittification, where it delivers surplus value to consumers. Probably as long as gaben is alive, it will be so. But don't expect it to last. There's nothing special about Steam the platform. You definitely don't own Steam games for real, and they don't ban randomly but for example, if you're caught cheating in a game, or talking about illegal things with your friends, you will find out how much you don't own those games.
• notarobot123 1y ago
  Everyone hates The Algorithm but we're all caught in network effects. Networks can collapse though. AI is propping up the Web but I'm not convinced it can do that indefinitely. The dream of Internet enabled disintermediation is not dead. We'll eventually switch protocols, change the incentive structures and build a social internet for ourselves - at least those of us who've not had our souls eaten by Moloch already. It's not inevitable but it is possible and it is what a lot of us actually want.
  • ath3nd 1y ago
    https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
    • josh-sematic 1y ago
      This is a lucid but terrifying read.
• protocolture 1y ago
  >But eventually the market will fix this, right? People will feel sick of being manipulated and move elsewhere? You can literally go outside and talk to people. There's no moat around dating apps. Human beings continue to exist in meatspace. I am yet to see a dating app contract that prevents you from being casually approached by strangers. Heck matchmakers still exist.
  • seydor 1y ago
    > You can literally go outside and talk to people. You can't . If you talk to modern city people the way you casually said 'hi' to strangers in the 90s , at best you 'll end up in a tiktok branded as a creepy person
    • officehero 1y ago
      This exchange highlights the huge difference in experience people have w.r.t. dating. Some people get approached all the time and others never get approached and it's always been like that. I blame humanity for this unfair system rather than some stupid app.
      • protocolture 1y ago
        I remember trying to date a woman in college, she would drop what appeared to me as incredible hints, but if I acted on them she would just ignore me. We once had a 2 hour conversation about how she just could not find a mexican restaurant in town and would do /anything/ to eat at one. So I found one (willed it into existence) and then she simply wasn't interested. Thing was, I dont really care about the rejection so much as, it was super easy for me to have relatively deep and interesting conversation with a total stranger. This wasn't even the first one, previous conversations about "Why are cities taking up valuable agricultural land" and "The best gifts to buy a woman are power tools" went down much the same way. If people are convinced that the conversation to be rejected in cant even take place then I guess I understand concerns about the birthrate a little more.
    • Klonoar 1y ago
• anon7000 1y ago
  Today I visited the shit website known as Fandom, and within a second of scrolling the page, the entire page was ads. Not joking: https://imgur.com/a/8QzBZGM https://imgur.com/a/8QzBZGM — and it’s not a contrived example, this is the first thing that happened after reaching the page via a search for some character in a show. This is the default new user experience for Fandom, at least some portion of the time. How is this acceptable to the employees and executives of that company? The CTO, Adil Ajmal, says “we help people worldwide go deeper on their favorite games, entertainment, and culture.” How can I possibly do that with the absurd number of ads on the page? The money incentive in software right now is to make it extremely shitty. We need ways to incentivize people, and especially executives, to make friendly decisions for their users. Right now across the industry, many people are getting promoted and hired for decisions that are extremely hostile to their customers and visitors. Whether it be for replacing support with an unhelpful, dumb AI bot, or marginally growing revenue by shoveling ads down your unwilling throat, we are not incentivizing products that are good and friendly to humans. Seriously, fuck all the investors who are incentivizing this BS. Of course, we need drastic changes to the economic system (the counterproductive incentives exist everywhere), but you have a choice in the matter. It’s possible to build a good product and make good money and make some revenue growth without being absolutely insane about it. Companies are betting that customers won’t catch on. Facebook might be a good example. It’s turned into such a shithole that no one in a certain age range wants to deal with it anymore, outside of very specific niches. The primary feed & product has failed.
  • seydor 1y ago
    ads are the most benign form of extraction. They attack your attention but that's just about it. The manipulative algorithms, the walled garden, the subscriptions , the extractive surcharges, the anticompetitive rules , those came after ads and they are far worse and far more profitable. Wish we could go back to a free, ad-supported internet, but the whole internet is now a front for stockholder ponzi schemes.
    • account42 1y ago
      Ads don't just take your attention lol. The point of getting your attention is to manipulate you into taking actions or making decisions that align with the interests of the advertiser (usually profit) over your own.
• vasco 1y ago
  Nothing will make a nerd a communist faster than getting a taste of real life on dating apps.
  • nlitened 1y ago
    How would communism help with that? Make women common property?
    • jksflkjl3jk3 1y ago
      I suppose if all men made the same salary that would level the playing field to some degree.
      • nlitened 1y ago
        It would remove one more option of leveling the playing field for short, ugly, or stupid men, no?
    • vasco 1y ago
      It helps if you read the post to understand. He was bummed people pay for boosts.
      • nlitened 1y ago
        Yeah, so how does communism solve the situation when attention of women is limited and needs to be competed for? Does every man get an equal 3-second slice of attention from each girl on communist dating apps?
        • Ray20 1y ago
          Attractive women are not such a rare resource. There is no particular problem in collecting it and distributing it fairly. One attractive woman can satisfy tens of thousands of men during the period of her attractiveness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_of_water_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_of_water_theory
• hardwaresofton 1y ago
  > If you open a government S&P 500 account for everyone with $1,000 at birth that’ll pay their social security cause it like…goes up…wait who’s creating this value again? This is a good point. Some VCs were major proponents of this (and tons of other business people I'm sure), but this is of course just a guaranteed inflow into the largest companies and the companies that think they will be large some day. Yet another way to reallocate public cash to private companies. Another similar example is UBI -- its proof of an economy that is not dynamic. It's a tacit approval and recognition of the fact that "no, you probably won't be able to find a job with dignity that can support you and your family, so the government will pay to make you comfortable while you exist".
  • PartiallyTyped 1y ago
    It is an allocation to the biggest companies at any time. ETFs need to rebalance, increase, decrease shares of a given stock and even evict them. Buying shares on SPY exposes you to the current companies but also any companies that will join. If a company gets evicted, then there is massive drop in their stock pricing as most movement is mechanistic and done by ETFs. Well massive is relative. For example last week we saw quite the drop in pltr after it was removed from russel2000.
    • n2d4 1y ago
      FYI this is not true and has been debunked in newer studies; the reason why it seems true is because companies that enter the SP500 tend to enter it because they're doing well which makes its stock go up. If you control for that factor, presence in the SP500 does not significantly affect the stock price. https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr484.pdf https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff...
      • PartiallyTyped 1y ago
        It’s not about SPY per-se, but about ETFs in general. Addition to spy is likely an addition to many other big volume ETFs. Top stocks also join QQQ which is another highly liquid ETF. Most market volume according to citi is done by ETFs, approximately 80%. When said ETFs rebalance at start and end of any particular day, we end up with big movements, much wider than the sideways chop we observe during the day when movement is mostly performed MMs that deal with hedging or dropping options value. So I don’t think it’s the presence to S&P per se, but presence in big ETFs. Also that paper is from 2012. Market’s a lot different these days. To be clear, I am not saying that getting in there implies stock go brr. I am saying that in the context of the whole comment chain, buying spy exposes one to all companies that will enter or be evicted from the ETF, which then theoretically funds the companies which then produce value, which returns back as dividends or growth of stock. If we look deeper though, buying into ETFs likely means the shares that are exchanged are bought and sold by and to MMs, so a whole lot of value is lost to them.
• kragen 1y ago
  Oh, shit. Well said, sir. But I think this may be unrealistically optimistic, assuming that the problem is temporary.
• tumdum_ 1y ago
  It’s a pity that (Algorithm free) cohost died.
• xoralkindi 1y ago
  > Someday, people will have to realize we live in a society. What will it take? Anarchism, socialism and communism can work perfect in a small village where everyone knows and trusts each other. But if you scale it up it does not work well because people can be corrupt. If you want to scale up to a Geo Global level that is trust-less the best way we know is to use Capitalism, but Capitalism ends up becoming more and more centralized. Because Capitalism is inherently competitive there will always be winners and losers and these are not just businesses it's everyone in the system because capital is required to partake in the system. This competitiveness is also what leads to the lack of "morality". What will it take? I think you cannot have the benefits of capitalism without these side-effects.
  • TFYS 1y ago
    I think we now have the technology to make decision-making and resource allocation systems that do not need to centralize power. If we can do that, then it wouldn't matter that people can be corrupt, because there would be no positions of power that people can abuse.
    • xoralkindi 1y ago
      I also believe that technology is the solution. But all the key technology is centralized Chips, AI, Batteries, Cryptography, Email, Internet access, Radio Waves
  • sothatsit 1y ago
    Most people aren't looking to eliminate capitalism. They just want constraints to be put on it. Higher taxes on wealth, stricter antitrust enforcement, investing in social infrastructure, or passing laws that protect consumers don't prevent capitalism from working. Australia has social healthcare and massive mining companies. They coexist just fine. There really is a lot of wiggle room between fully embracing socialism and going full anarcho-capitalist, and maybe the tradeoffs of shifting towards the socialism side of things are worth considering. Although, George seems to just want to flip the table out of the belief that real reform that would impact most people positively will never get passed in a democracy. It would require too much change.
• skocznymroczny 1y ago
  Online dating websites are a waste of time unless you are in the top % of men. Sad reality of online dating is that a small % of men gets attention of most women, while the remaining % of men get little to no attention at all. The whole boosting system makes it even worse.
• cadamsdotcom 1y ago
  There’s no gain from outrage. Just opt out and move on. I sold my TV. Don’t wanna get creeped on thanks. A TV with a microphone might be convenient for some but for us that’s a hard pass. I drive a 12 year old car, its fuel efficiency is horrendous and its entertainment system barely works. But it’s off the grid! When I turn it off it TURNS OFF. It doesn’t creep on me, it doesn’t sell my driving habits or report my location or upload microphone recordings at the dealer when it’s plugged in for a service. I’m biding my time until enough others think like me that a company takes notice. One day someone will make a car that loudly says it doesn’t creep on you, one day someone will make a TV that doesn’t creep on you. One day companies will care again about the customer. One day people will be wise enough to recognize enshittification and will call companies on their shit, and the market will speak. Not today, but soon. Eventually.
  • 0xDEAFBEAD 1y ago
    Why not start that company yourself? DuckDuckGo has been pretty successful, and supposedly they're looking to invest in other privacy-focused companies: https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/23/duckduckgo-will-be-making-more-early-stage-investments-in-privacy-focused-startups/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/23/duckduckgo-will-be-making-...
• Biologist123 1y ago
  I sometimes think of the internet as an alternative dimension: as mind space; it was Terra Nova and speculators rode in to grab the available real estate. But as the experience also showed us, there are maybe infinite mind spaces, and the job of anyone dissatisfied with the status quo is to open those new spaces where networks can be built around principles other than enshittification.
  • margarina72 1y ago
    America also was once Terra Nova...
• varelse 1y ago
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• mhog_hn 1y ago
  What meta structure allows us to get rid of rent seeking behavior? I don’t have an answer - is there scientific research on this? Taxation? Loopholes will be found. Lawfare against it? Lobbying will win. I am amazed by capitalism, but at the same time it is a ruthless machine - and in democratic countries it is highly unlikely that a single political party can force the machine into a new direction. Perhaps that is a very nice feature, at the cost of also having to tolerate rent seeking, but it sure as hell sucks to see these downsides.
  • max_ 1y ago
    The bitter truth is that Nirvana doesn't exist. There is no perfect system. But we can choose the least detrimental.
  • poorlyknit 1y ago
    What can we do to make rent-seeking hurt society less? Imo we should start by decoupling money from power. Right now, people are forced to participate in the rent-seekers game because his wealth implies power over them.
  • lmm 1y ago
    Social cohesion. People are happy to rip off an outsider, a stranger, a schmuck. But people within a high-trust social group generally don't rip each other off - you still need to be on the look out for fraudsters, but you won't be doing it systematically and virtually openly. It's not a coincidence that all this has happened as the US' national identity has gotten weaker and weaker. They're shifting from a cohesive nation to one of those "it's a single block on the map but it's actually 200 tribes who all hate each other" countries, and people's values and behaviour are shifting to match.
• willguest 1y ago
  This post, and presumably its author, is reaching escape velocity, or at least max-Q. A second-order difficulty is that the tools with which we could go about dissecting, reimagining and reconstructing new society are also tainted by the powers that have delivered such malignant incentives and effects. This is not new and the fervour and insistence will continue to mount as the cracks in the dam grow in number and size. There are, however, positive routes forward but in my experience they are somewhat alienating because the majority of people around you will think you are mad, weird or simply delusional. To be clear, I am probably all of those things (definitely the first two), but I prefer that to being a commodity powering a machine that is disinterested in anything that doesn't make it bigger. Two illustrations: First, cognitivism. A sneaky, anthropocentric idea that simulataneously promotes and soothes a sense of dissonance. We don't, imo, create meaning primarily by modelling simulations of the world in our heads and forming goals based on them. Sure, this happens, but to give it primacy will lead to all sorts of unexpected and unpleasant effects. Alternative: constructivism. Second, systems of perpetual (exponential) growth. Every day we buy into this by transacting within a system that has this implicit assumption built into it. We do not (an cannot) comprehend the scale and influence of this, because society is unpredictable and the effects are often emergent. Example: tragedy of the commons. This system didn't just show up by itself, nor was it the creation of a shadowy cabal - it perpetuates because we all use it, all the time. Alternative: imagine harder, build systems that mimic nature in its sigmoidal beauty, not only their growth phase. An important milestone is, imo, proper systems thinking. This is no-ones fault and we are all complicit, but we all possess the ability for radical adaptation and, where it has been cultivated, the ability to rebuild all that which is broken. I regularly think/read about, work towards and promote such angles, including ethical algorithm design, open-model behavioural analysis and value-aware technology. If anyone would like to join my micro-revolution, you are most welcome. I should warn you though, it doesn't pay well.
• brador 1y ago
  Every solution he proposes is based on violence and hate. How about we try love, empathy, and compassion to solve our problems? Collaboration?
  • jdiaz97 1y ago
    Hello Lex Fridman
• yubblegum 1y ago
  Who writes like this? Another victim of the little shiny screen device.
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• hshdhdhj4444 1y ago
  I’m increasingly convinced advertising is a huge mistake and just not normal. We don’t need advertising, which fundamentally is little different from lying and manipulation, at all, and society would be a lot better if we denormalized advertising. If a company paying an influencer to talk about them, or placing an ad on a sports game, would be denormalized to the extent that it would lead to people deliberately not buying the product. Instead one could subscribe to trusted reviewers who make their money off subscription revenues and therefore their interests are aligned with the customer rather than the ad supplier.
  • samdoesnothing 1y ago
    If this happened people would complain that "capitalism" made the internet prohibitively expensive.
• magicfractal 1y ago
  Nothing like opening up Hinge to radicalize an individual!
• GardenLetter27 1y ago
  The issue is the market. These things are possible because of the skewed market. There are far more men than women on dating apps, women don't buy the boosts, etc. So you are paying for exposure in that skewed market. If it were a complete free-for-all then women would get thousands of messages a day and not use the apps at all.
  • carlosjobim 1y ago
    Sperms outnumber eggs by millions to one.
    • BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
      Okay? Men don’t outnumber women millions to one.
      • carlosjobim 1y ago
        A woman's reproductive value biologically is several orders of magnitude higher than a man's. Because she is the limiting factor.
        • BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
          You’re defining that in the simplest possible way, ie if the stars aligned a man could, in theory, impregnate thousands of women. In reality, the factors that limit a man’s potential mates are equally real. The population’s sex ratio is no less a biological reality than the structure of a reproductive system. So a woman’s reproductive value fluctuates depending on circumstances, but remains similar to a man’s under most circumstances in a modern country.
          • carlosjobim 1y ago
            Genetical evidence shows that twice as many women as men successfully reproduced during the history of our species. And if it wasn't for a period of massive population increase combined with monogamy, that ratio would probably be maybe five to one or more. The sex ratio of children is hard coded genetically at 50/50 for pretty much all mammals, since any deviance would be corrected back to 50/50 within a couple of generations. In modern society, an average woman can have as many sexual partners as she chooses to, and very distinguished men can have that. Birth control means that there isn't any actual children resulting from these encounters, but our biological imperatives are still the same. A woman's reproductive value is infinitely higher than a man's in modern society, where the man's reproductive value is approaching zero.
• zkmon 1y ago
  The layers are part of the evolution. We may like to credit ourselves with great inventions which built these layers, but it is like trees claiming to create the wind, rivers claiming to create water flow etc. Humans are just facilitators or vehicles that carry the wind of change. We don't cause the change. The change has selected the agents who showed least resistance to the change. Then the agents gloriously claimed that they caused the change.
• spacecadet 1y ago
  In short. Yes. Sorry- but you can and are able to contemplate the externalities of your creations before you create them... imo most people prefer a little delusion as a treat. Obviously it is not black and white like this. In turn- we all have the free choice to not engage. I don't engage with 99% of contemporary market economy tech, for these reasons. Heck I still carry cash just so I can leave cash tips, or make small cash payments at stores, bribe an official, etc.
• bryanrasmussen 1y ago
  Huh, I thought this was going to be some sort of self-reflection about fascism and such but no - it's about how a site is too manipulative in its UX. Gosh. In a way the real baddies was the trivial stuff we fixated on along the way.
  • bsenftner 1y ago
    I thought so too, but apparently discussing Australian air travel is the topic...
  • kylestanfield 1y ago
    Nothing about testing a home made self driving car on the Highway either
• talkingtab 1y ago
  The answer is yes. The answer about how bad is really bad. We humans have never before understood how essential our innate collaboration is nor. Nor have we ever understood how fragile it is. Here are some thought experiments for you. Take a colony of ants and destroy their ability to use a pheromone trail. What happens? Take a colony of ants and use the pheromone trail to generate "profit" for some of the ants at the cost of others. Ants probably have little self consciousness. But add that awareness to them - essentially tell them they are being manipulated - and then perform the above two experiments again. A good way to understand complex adaptive systems, like the ones we humans use, is to try to build some. See John Holland's "Hidden Order" for some hints on how to go about this.
• msgodel 1y ago
  >If you open a government S&P 500 account for everyone with $1,000 at birth that’ll pay their social security cause it like…goes up…wait who’s creating this value again It changes with production, if production shrinks it shrinks. This is exactly what you need with a retirement account, otherwise you end up with a situation like the UK where the pension system is crushing the workers.
• LeafItAlone 1y ago
  I generally avoid George’s non-technical posts because they are… let’s say uninspired. But here is one that actually makes sense. Of course the self-reflection with who he otherwise praises and spends his time with will never set in, but at least others may take the time to look inward and do something differently. Something has to change. Even HN seems to have had an increase in sentiment like this in the past few years. Maybe I’m just noticing it more myself. Maybe it’s not just the existence of the Grape, but rather where it came from.
  • alecco 1y ago
    Hmmm. I'll just leave this here https://x.com/ns123abc/status/1940980667455836578 https://x.com/ns123abc/status/1940980667455836578
    • LeafItAlone 1y ago
      I don’t use Twitter. I believe it plays a big part in the degradation of society that geohot hot refers to in this article. Can you share that that post is about and the significance of it in relation to this link?
      • deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      • nosioptar 1y ago
        If you change the domain to xcancel.com, you can see twitter stuff without being on twitter. The tweet claims a startup built an ai cheating tool, another ripped them off, then a YC backed start up ripped the second group off. The YC backed guy claims he isn't worried about legal because he got the license from gpt. (Wouldn't that be killer evidence in a lawsuit that the defendant didn't even attempt due diligence?) https://xcancel.com/ns123abc/status/1940980667455836578 https://xcancel.com/ns123abc/status/1940980667455836578
        • LeafItAlone 1y ago
• coolThingsFirst 1y ago
  That’s below HS level of writing and to think he was born in the US. Very poor thought. Likely written after consumption of some bad drugs.
• Havoc 1y ago
  Sure seems like big tech is on the cusp of killing the open internet by pulling the rug out from underneath bloggers etc. And the antagonistic algo everywhere world is starting to suck. And google removing their "don't be evil" sure seemed very self-aware. ...but not sure about the whole "needs WW3 to reset" angle...seems a bit much
• azangru 1y ago
  I had no idea what Hinge was (had to google), and now I am curious what is it that makes it holy shit with a boost.
• Aerbil313 1y ago
  > Democracy, haha, you think the algorithms will let you vote to kill them? Your vote is as decoupled from action as the amount Uber pays the driver is decoupled from the fare that you pay. Relevant here, all the way from 1975: "...In any technologically advanced society the individual’s fate MUST depend on decisions that he personally cannot influence to any great extent. A technological society cannot be broken down into small, autonomous communities, because production depends on the cooperation of very large numbers of people and machines. Such a society MUST be highly organized and decisions HAVE TO be made that affect very large numbers of people. When a decision affects, say, a million people, then each of the affected individuals has, on the average, only a one-millionth share in making the decision. What usually happens in practice is that decisions are made by public officials or corporation executives, or by technical specialists, but even when the public votes on a decision the number of voters ordinarily is too large for the vote of any one individual to be significant. Thus most individuals are unable to influence measurably the major decisions that affect their lives. There is no conceivable way to remedy this in a technologically advanced society. The system tries to “solve” this problem by using propaganda to make people WANT the decisions that have been made for them, but even if this “solution” were completely successful in making people feel better, it would be demeaning." - Industrial Society And Its Future, Ted Kaczynski (1975)
• hermitcrab 1y ago
  At one point I was fixated on conversion rates, cost per click, pricing tiers etc for my small software business. Then I realized I'm doing ok, and I don't have to squeeze every last penny out of it. Now I choose what to do based at least as much on how interesting it will be for me, as how much money I think it might earn. It has been quite liberating.
• fnordpiglet 1y ago
  I worked on the original browsers and modern internet infrastructure. I worked on building the hyperscale cloud infra that enables the modern internet. I’ve had my fingers on so much of what is happening. And I felt genuinely like I was helping build some thing better. Then the role of product manager was invented and I regret everything I’ve done.
  • davidee 1y ago
    Would you be willing to expand on that? Context: built a viable business which I ran for many years. Eventually got seduced and went to work for big(ish) tech as a product manager. It was so divested from what I understood about building great products - however I was fantastic at doing things my way and getting shit done; largely based on what I learned from doing "all the things" at a small business. I had lots of success while also suffering with burnout and anxiety almost constantly. Worked on incredibly popular cloud and OSS software. Hated most of it - especially what product management and the product-management-industrial-complex was distorting that role to be (divorced from much of reality but also expected to fix bullshit founder/c-suite/old-guard behavior). Oy the Miro boards and endless GDocs comment threads. I left product (and some wild comp) to go back to building things. So, I'm not disagreeing, I am just hoping you could expand a bit more on your own personal experience with rise of the product manager role. Nevertheless, I also don't think PMs and PM-centric culture, are to solely to blame. I've not yet met a leadership team who's behavior and decisions I respect and/or can live with (and yes, it's highly possible I'm the problem).
• hardwaresofton 1y ago
  What was George doing on Hinge? I've seen a stream or two and IIRC he had a significant other. Absolutely none of my business but technically this is on-topic right now, in this thread.
• cjbgkagh 1y ago
  Tips through apps, much like charity at the grocery store checkout, is a really strong signal that the provider can raise their prices. Basically asking how wealthy do you feel after the transaction.
• draw_down 1y ago
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• dangus 1y ago
  The author is metaphorically complaining about seeing alcohol for sale after deciding to go to a bar. Nobody twisted your arm to use Hinge rather than utilize local dating resources like singles meetups, speed dating, and matchmaking services. Or just get a group-oriented hobby and talk to people in real life.
  • tpoacher 1y ago
    Yeah that's right. If you don't like AI and data-mining just don't use the internet at all, amirite?
    • dangus 1y ago
      To some extent, yes. Not every internet thing is an abusive app like dating apps or Facebook. You can just not use those apps.
• tempodox 1y ago
  > Will mass starvation fix this? Or will the attitude of thinking it’s okay to manipulate others at scale persist even past that? As long as everyone is OK with the losers losing big so the winners can win big, it will persist. As long as the “I've got mine, screw you” attitude keeps being culturally ingrained, it will persist.
• BenGosub 1y ago
  In my opinion this is one of many simptoms of a decadent society on the brink of collapse. And I also think that cheap money and huge fiscal debts have been feeling this decadence.
• adxl 1y ago
  I’m not a big user of Uber but I need to say that the experiences there are mostly better than your grandad’s taxi (pay up for Uber X if you want a better experience). Mostly cabs were/are badly maintained and some seem downright dangerous with shocks dead, idiot lights on, smoking tailpipes and just general crappy interiors. I once got in a NYC cab where there blood all over the back of the drivers seat, got right back out. Cabbies are quarrelsome and grumpy. One guy picked me up at my house obviously drunk. I mentioned Uber to one guy who became very aggressive. Got out at the next light. Ah the good ole days. Now for Uber. If you pay to upgrade to Uber X it’s a great experience. One time I got in the wrong Uber (not X). They said silver Nissan at station 4 at the airport in Atlanta. Got in the car and he was obviously going somewhere else than where I requested. When he realized I was the wrong passenger the driver became extremely agitated and aggressive. My bad for not checking his plate, his bad for not checking the passenger out. He was the driver so it’s really his responsibility since I may not know these things. Also I could not leave a bad review as I did not know who this driver was. Always always check you are in the right car.
• hammond 1y ago
  The author should start with his own product, which stops working if it doesn't connect to the internet at least every 14 days. https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/blob/a8ec08e5bbc2be0a320fdb6853957588dae67048/system/updated/updated.py#L34 https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/blob/a8ec08e5bbc2be0a32...
  • hn1986 1y ago
    Or the fact that he volunteered to work for Twitter, which is the ultimate propaganda recommendation algorithm since Musk took over. https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/20/23519922/george-hotz-geohot-twitter-internship-resigns https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/20/23519922/george-hotz-geo...
    • lannisterstark 1y ago
      >Or the fact that he volunteered to work for Twitter Worse! He volunteered, then went "Hey anyone want an internship? Fix twitter search, Make the code MIT, and then maybe I'll give you an internship." ...had 0 authority to give anyone an internship btw. Dudebro just wanted free fix.
  • grafmax 1y ago
    Yeah cause this niche product is the structural source of the problems he cites.
• wayeq 1y ago
  It'd be really nice if the title gave an indication of what the article is about.
• morkalork 1y ago
  I went to Walmart twice last week, Tuesday and Friday. Passed by the chips aisle twice and the price on Friday was over a dollar higher per-bag. They've got those fancy e-ink screen price-tags now and I guess they're doing surge pricing. I'm tired of this shit.
  • DLoupe 1y ago
    It's called "dynamic pricing" and it's everywhere. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Pricing https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Pricing
• ztauras 1y ago
  Everyone is good and bad, not that question, why the discusion revolves on tipping?
• einpoklum 1y ago
  Sorry for being clueless but - what is Hinge? A quick search says it's a dating application. But I don't quite understand from the first paragraph that this is the Hinge he's talking about. Clarifications would be greatly appreciated...
  • brogdan 1y ago
    It’s the pay-to-play nature of dating apps that he is railing about.
• jerome-jh 1y ago
  "are we the baddies?" We are and without AI. See how people struggle with their computers and devices, and how it is often caused by an undesired software update. See how software updates, or the lack thereof, are weaponized to make devices unusable or obsolete.
• mayormaura 1y ago
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