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Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

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Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#141

Post by vikingerik »

itake wrote: post #105
dash2 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about the Reddit model, where different subreddits and their mods are given a lot of freedom to implement their own rules?

My complaints with reddit model is: 1/ Moderators aren't always aligned with the community (see recent /r/antiwork scandal). 2/ Reddit does not pay moderators for the labor they provide. Moderation is basically a job that takes hours of time and they profit off the backs of that free labor.

Moderators are paid in power. They get to apply their opinions to determine what others can see. That is a very tempting wage for many.

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#142

Post by mnadkvlb »

martin_a wrote: post #117
rocgf wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe there are already such instances, I believe https://nebula.app/ is one of them. The problem is that this does not change the dynamic of what people want to watch. The problem is not necessarily a lack of ways to find and filter such content, but rather that this is not appealing for broad audiences.

By just looking at the thumbnails of the videos I see that Nebula is not the solution but part of the problem. It's the same clickbaity images all over the place. With regards to being able to find and filter such content, I'm not sure that point still stands. With the various changes YouTube has made, it becomes very hard to see what's good and what not before watching a video or being into the topic and understandi…

I have similar experience with all changes from youtube.

Youtube doesnt even want you to see the length of videos by upcoming shorts feature which i absolutely despise. They dont want you to choose which media you consume so they can push more trash down viewers throats.

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#143

Post by ericfrazier »

Right now, government holds corporations accountable. I think the people themselves should hold corporations accountable and stop relying on the state, which is owned by the corporations. Consumers need to be conscious of where their money is going and what causes it supports. If a person believes in trans-person's rights they probably shouldn't be eating at Chick-Fil-A. There's no faster feedback for bad corporate behavior than direct and instant consumer action. Software that addresses this need to make the consumer more knowledgeable will benefit the future most.

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#145

Post by egypturnash »

dash2 wrote: post #101
yodsanklai wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they could undo much of the harm done by our culturally divisive "social" networks. Or it could be worse. Meta/Twitter spend a lot of resource to moderate content for a reason. I don't see how a decentralised model could solve the problem of content moderation.

How about the Reddit model, where different subreddits and their mods are given a lot of freedom to implement their own rules?

This is the Mastodon model! Your instance’s admin can enforce whatever rules she desires, and ban entire remote instances for breaking them.

For instance, if my instance has a rule that “nothing related to feet may be posted on No-Feets Friday”, I might decide to block foot.celebration for being a hotbed of constant footposting regardless of the day. If you disagree with my choice, there’s a ton of other instances out there you could move to, or go get foot.party and start your own. I might block these Friday-Foot-Friendly instances as well; if enough of my users decide they want to talk with people on those instances then I might suddenly find myself with everyone leaving. If sentiments are widely split on the subject of Feet On Friday then we might end up with two groups of instances that largely don’t federate with each other over this matter.

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#146

Post by fsflover »

mikewarot wrote: post #108

I think that computer security causes a lot of other issues, like the Walled gardens, and the constant thread of cyber-attacks. A solid OS that is microkernel based, and ends up with a track record of stability is one of the most important things we need right now. With out it, people have to use the walled gardens to stay safe. Software innovation is stifled, and it's always there as an possible trigger for overbear…

> constant thread of cyber-attacks. A solid OS that is microkernel based

Not microkernel-based, but hardware virtualization based, which is even more secure: https://qubes-os.org.

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#147

Post by grishka »

Bedon292 wrote: post #77
loudmax wrote: post #50

So many communication platforms are proprietary walled gardens these days. Facebook, Twitter, Slack, Discord, and so on. Their incentives do not align with what's best for their users, or society in general. We absolutely need open solutions become the standard dominant medium for communicating. If Matrix and Mastodon become as easy to use as their proprietary counterparts, they could undo much of the harm done by ou…

Do you not expect people to self select into the same divisive social networks no matter the communication platform that they are using? How does offering yet another platform for them to do so undo any of the harm already caused?

Problem #1 with modern social media is pervasive recommendations. You can't just follow a bunch of people you already know and be done with it. With a few exceptions, the platform itself will incessantly try its damnest to expose you to content from outside of your network because that's what drives metrics.

People can't be harmed by seeing updates from their friends and from communities they deliberately chose to follow. It's very important that every single post you see in your feed is a direct consequence of your informed decision to follow its author.

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#148

Post by nanomonkey »

nanomonkey wrote: post #129

Conflict-free Replication Data Types (CRDTs) and private cryptographically signed ledgers (not proof of work public blockchains, but similar) are what excites me these days, as they allow for users to own their own data, securely create transactions and collaborate without the overhead of their data being held hostage on one companies servers. IPV6 rides along with this as something I look forward to, only because so…

This is important to me because I am currently working on an open source Distributed Consensus and Resource Planning tool, where people can build markets, supply chains, feed-back loops for goods and services that they care about in a distributed manner. Imagine an Amazon marketplace or Task Rabbit built on a open gossip protocol. You can start with your own Inventory Management, building up suppliers that you trust, and then build out your own Products and Services to offer up within your network. You follow the companies or individuals you trust, thus sidestepping ad networks, and know the providence of all of the items your purchase, and the reputation of the individuals that you support, filtering out anything that you don't want to be bothered by.

The tool is also flexible enough to be used as a collaborative tool, building organizations to accomplish tasks from your network. The value that each person brings to the table can be tracked, allowing for invisible labor to be surfaced and properly compensated.

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#149

Post by 1270018080 »

ericfrazier wrote: post #143

Right now, government holds corporations accountable. I think the people themselves should hold corporations accountable and stop relying on the state, which is owned by the corporations. Consumers need to be conscious of where their money is going and what causes it supports. If a person believes in trans-person's rights they probably shouldn't be eating at Chick-Fil-A. There's no faster feedback for bad corporate b…

Like an app where you input your opinion on an issue, and you can find businesses with leadership or lobbying efforts that don't oppose you? You'd run out of places to shop pretty quickly with 5 corporations run by oligarchs that own basically all consumer products in America.

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#150

Post by logicalmonster »

mysore wrote: post #22

self driving cars could save the world from millions of deaths per year and reduce stress and wasted time from sitting in traffic in cities like LA/NYC

There are some real positives to self-driving cars, but the negatives concern me far more.

A lot of people who have great trust in the system probably won't see this as an issue until its too late, but one of the things that greatly concerns me about this notion of self-driving cars is its possible negative impact on human freedom.

To some extent, a car represents freedom because its a tool that lets you go anywhere you want to go without requesting permission from anybody. Particularly for cars with internal combustion engines, the ability to quickly fuel up and travel anywhere affords you some measure of control over your life and choices, particularly in an emergency.

A car that's run on software is effectively no longer yours and cannot be relied on as a tool to ensure control over your own fate. And electric cars (at least current versions) cannot quickly be refueled in the same way.

A corporation decides to demand extra payments for some software that lets you travel on highways? What can you do about it when your new car is maxed out the wazoo with DRM?

Government decides that it doesn't want its subjects to travel too far? Software update refuses to take you anywhere besides approved destinations and alerts authorities. This is no longer dystopian speculation or some distant past authoritarian experience: we've seen in modern western democratic countries in very recent experience that it was made illegal to travel too far from your house.

I love a lot of the tech behind Teslas and electric cars, but I don't trust the scenario where my car can be manipulated entirely by software and there's no absolute fully physical manual override that ensures a human can control it.

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