DNA tests exposing family secrets that normally people would take to the grave.
Is that a unintended consequence or an intended consequence? Seems intended to me.
Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
171–180 of 387 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
#172The weaknesses of the phone system are being exploited and exposed. Telemarketers have learned they can just put whatever they want on their caller ID with zero verification, including the phone numbers of random local individuals. If the FCC and/or the phone companies don't start forwarding originator information so spammers can effectively be blocked by any user, the phone system will (and deserves to) fail. At lea…
It's gotten worse lately. I'm seeing calls allegedly from Citi, Capital One, etc., that have the identical credit card scam spiel. They go nowhere (but get recorded), since I've used Asterisk to put a CAPTCHA in the way. My "landline" (actually VoIP now) stays blissfully quiet. If it actually rings, I know it's a human...
Do you have a link or guide on where to start with this? It sounds like something that would be really useful!
Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
#173For me, tech has turned into a crutch when I don't know what to do. I've caught myself in the middle of automatic behavior and it's a bit scary - opening Reddit or HN, closing it because I've already read everything on the front page, then opening it again a few seconds later without even thinking about it. I wonder what I would be doing without it. Creating art? Going out? I'd have to do something. It's something I…
This is depressingly relatable. Sometimes when I'm walking back home, I end up checking Instagram, Reddit, work mail at every crosswalk while I'm waiting for the signal to turn green. And I'm not happy because either there's nothing new or because I realize what I'm doing and I tell myself "look what you've become, you're not even capable of waiting 30 seconds without pulling out your phone".
Set up something else to do when you pull out your phone.
Set up Anki, lichess, etc. anything that is better than brain junk food.
It's really easy to break the social media habit by replacing it with something semi-useful.
Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We wanted it. I'm not entirely convinced this is accurate. It definitely is in part, but not in whole. We wanted these better search tools and we like recommendation systems. But I know a lot of people are frustrated with algorithms like YouTube's recommendation system trapping them. (e.g. watch one Joe Rogan video and you get firehosed with more JRE videos). The thing is we also don't notice that this reinforcemen…
But does Youtube's recommendation system trap you any more than old media? I remember having much the same feeling with library books. I've read 10 pages of this author's thoughts and I really want to pick up something else - but I don't have time to go to the library this week, so I guess I'm stuck reading the other 290 pages.
> I don't have time to go to the library this week ...
That's a very different situation though.
This is as if you went to the library and the librarian only showed you other books by that author and the books that might be (poorly) related to the one you just read.
Like books with similar words in the title or books that people grabbed after that one.
YouTube is pure trash for discovery 90% of the time because the algorithm is tuned for addiction : you are fed content that is designed to keep you hooked and it will always, always bias towards that because that's the business decision.
I'd love to see a recommendation engine that intentionally surfaced "similar but different in key ways"
Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is depressingly relatable. Sometimes when I'm walking back home, I end up checking Instagram, Reddit, work mail at every crosswalk while I'm waiting for the signal to turn green. And I'm not happy because either there's nothing new or because I realize what I'm doing and I tell myself "look what you've become, you're not even capable of waiting 30 seconds without pulling out your phone".
Would you be any happier if you were, instead, standing there staring at traffic waiting for the light to change?
I’ve started leaving my phone at home when I walk my dog to get coffee every morning. The first few days, maybe even weeks, it was actually pretty uncomfortable. (What does a normal person do at the crosswalk without a phone??) Now I kind of like it. I think about what I have to do for the day and mentally plan out how I’ll tackle it.
The only major downside is when I think of something I want to write down or look up.
Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
#176Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
#177For me, tech has turned into a crutch when I don't know what to do. I've caught myself in the middle of automatic behavior and it's a bit scary - opening Reddit or HN, closing it because I've already read everything on the front page, then opening it again a few seconds later without even thinking about it. I wonder what I would be doing without it. Creating art? Going out? I'd have to do something. It's something I…
I do this a lot. It recently began to bother me. I started a list of things I have to do before I dick around on my phone: practice Japanese and meditate. I don't always remember, but when I do, I'm happier.
Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
#178We've learned that better tools doesn't actually create more productivity. Lots of people talk about how they dread email. A singular mega tool like Facebook or Evernote isn't great. Lots of disparate little tools isn't much better.
We've learned that data is unreliable. The highest click through rates come from nudity, or totally gross things like gore and trypophobia triggering holes. The highest CTR on text comes from well, clickbait. At this point everyone realizes this but some still don't notice that data-driven decisions optimizes for weird things.
IOT doesn't scale as well as we thought, because hardware doesn't scale at the rate of web software that we're used to. So hardware companies do more poorly than expected. Replace "hardware" with anything else that's hard to upgrade, and you get software-other hybrids like Uber and WeWork which didn't scale as well as anticipated.
Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel really relaxed and not bored at all when I go on vacation somewhere my phone gets little or no reception. It's amazing. There's so much to do without the Internet! Books are a thing, and there's more than enough top-notch fiction to last a lifetime, without re-reading. Writing is a thing. Sketching. Hell offline video games are a thing, for that matter, and you can mine the back catalogs of older consoles for…
That's the thing. That's never changed. Vacations have always been more fun. The change is that now, when you're doing boring mundane things, you can pull out your phone and have at least some modicum of entertainment.
I mean chillin’ in an Airbnb, not hiking or seeing the sights or whatever. Even that part’s better, without the Internet.
[EDIT] and yes I get the irony that AirBnB requires the Internet. Occasional Internet is handy to take care of necessities and create convenience. Constant Internet? I'm a skeptic.
Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
#180One of the big things for me is the demise of trustworthiness in just about everything. Extremely cheap phone calls plus Caller ID spoofing has made the telephone almost useless (raise your hand if you only answer callers in your contact list!), email has never been trustworthy, and the internet has made it possible for hoaxes to spread farther and faster than ever.
There's an app for that: Truecaller. It crowdsources who is calling.
And adds all your contacts with a misclick.