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What Happens Next Will Amaze You

idlewords.com

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Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#201

Post by tertius »

wcummings wrote: post #157
t2015_08_25 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> remove sources of income that people find relevant in exchange for ads that some higher up in marketing thinks relates to its users. Yes, that's a move toward integrity and away from endangerment and excess income. If "some higher up in marketing" doesn't understand their users, the problem is they're out-of-touch and that should be corrected, as opposed to endangering user's privacy. Currently, my tiny site operat…

>excess income I don't think this a problem most small publishers have.

They need to realize that eventually the market will drive their users elsewhere. Content is king and there is more content elsewhere.

If you provide a worse user experience with the same content as another, then income will dwindle altogether.

Innovate, move forward.

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#202

Post by TeMPOraL »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #199
TeMPOraL wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article most definitly does not have a (valid) point here. Idlewords is painting Elon as a bored billionaire who wants to nuke Mars because he has nothing better to do. It's completely ignoring both the reasons (and context) of the quote, and the fact that said 'bored billionaire' makes good and impactful progress in three important big problems of humanity - namely, energy safety, transportation and access to sp…

SpaceX is COTS welfare for LEO launches to the soon to be retired ISS. It is not on track for Mars colonization. Its utility is vastly exaggerated by the types of people who read HN and reddit. While it is impressive, it is just cheaper launches for certain edge cases. Colonization and terraforming other worlds is pure fiction right now and going on TV and yelling about dropping nukes to make Mars human safe looks ab…

> SpaceX is COTS welfare for LEO launches to the soon to be retired ISS. It is not on track for Mars colonization.

That's a very cynical view based on... I don't even know exactly. NASA is not the only customer of SpaceX, LEO doesn't end with ISS, and the path towards Mars was laid more-less explicitly since day one. They're on track, even if behind the schedule.

> The article paints Musk fairly, as an out of touch dreamer with crazy ideas. He steps over homeless people to rush to television producers to spout off the same canned futurism we've been hearing for decades. His version is slightly more plausible, but it, of course, ignores all social issues; issues that will only follow us into space. The same way futurists predicted a moon landing but never imagine women would get to vote, for example.

That smells strongly of copenhagen interpretation of ethics[0]. So Musk is trying to solve a problem (or three problems) for humanity, and suddenly he has to be responsible for all the problems? Why aren't we criticizing Bill Gates here for helping Africans fight malaria instead of helping Americans fight homelesness at home? Also; SpaceX, Tesla and Solar City are creating jobs. Which counts for doing something towards the problem. What exactly are people criticizing Musk here doing themselves for the homeless?

[0] - http://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethi...

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#203

Post by odonnellryan »

benihana wrote: post #84
mozumder wrote: post #2

The correct answer is to never use programmatic ads. Ever. If you own a site, just curate a set of ads on your site that actually enhances your sites appeal. A fashion site should have matching fashion ads. A tech site should have matching tech ads. A local site should have matching local ads. Reach out to advertisers to get these ads. Never use an algorithm. You, as an editor, should be better than the algorithms. A…

> The correct answer is to never Ah sweet, it's that one commenter who can prescribe the absolute correct answer to very complex situations with a couple of simple platitudes! Since you seem to be in a mood to drop the correct answer, maybe you can help me with some difficult decisions I'm facing: what programming language should I use? what should the next move of my business be? is she really the one, or should I m…

That's true, but I think in general if we had someone else making our decisions for us (obviously this is completely undesirable) they'd mostly be correct. Emotion plays a huge role in what we do, many times a negative role.

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#204

Post by samwiseg »

mdpopescu wrote: post #85
soneca wrote: post #37

Very interesting analogy between VC and communist central planners. Makes a lot of sense.

Followed by a conclusion that communism would be the solution, which makes a lot less sense...

He said social democracy, which has nothing to do with communism.

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#205

Post by nine_k »

tedks wrote: post #147
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easier to call out the author on a nitpick than to thoughtfully refute his arguments for the sake of racking up more imaginary internet points.

And the imaginary internet points incentive system HN uses implicitly incentivizes those posts. One way to stop this would be to have people who post low-value high-expected-karma-yield posts get randomly banned. This would function as a variable punishment and should be quite effective at training HN users.

Research says that infrequent and severe punishment results in an increase of the punishable behavior; it's quick, clear and consistent, but not severe, punishment that actually curbs the punishable behavior.

I wish downvotes here could be only cast with a comment explaining the reason, to improve clarity.

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#206

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

nine_k wrote: post #205
tedks wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the imaginary internet points incentive system HN uses implicitly incentivizes those posts. One way to stop this would be to have people who post low-value high-expected-karma-yield posts get randomly banned. This would function as a variable punishment and should be quite effective at training HN users.

Research says that infrequent and severe punishment results in an increase of the punishable behavior; it's quick, clear and consistent, but not severe, punishment that actually curbs the punishable behavior. I wish downvotes here could be only cast with a comment explaining the reason, to improve clarity.

I'm in huge agreement. Even if it's a drop-down to select off topic, abusive, etc, it would be so much better than the smug silence of an unexplained downvote.

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#207

Post by nine_k »

krapp wrote: post #171
tedks wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the imaginary internet points incentive system HN uses implicitly incentivizes those posts. One way to stop this would be to have people who post low-value high-expected-karma-yield posts get randomly banned. This would function as a variable punishment and should be quite effective at training HN users.

Punishing people for gaming the system as it's intended to be gamed would be counterproductive, because the karma system itself is based on flawed assumptions. The expectation here is that high karma indicates high intellectual quality, but that's demonstrably false. It doesn't do what it's intended to do and even detracts from the value of discussion in some places. A better way to improve content quality would be t…

Karma is the worst known proxy to expectations of reasonable behavior, except for all other proxies that have been tried.

It's basically a linear prediction model: someone who behaved reasonably in the past is expected to continue doing so. This is not always true, of course, but I beg anyone suggest a more precise model that can be realistically implemented.

Another purpose of karma is preventing a bot from registering 1000 accounts and using them immediatley for insistent mass downvoting. Of course, one can build rings of bot accounts that upvote each other to gain karma before operation, but this takes much more determination and skill than an internet hooligan usually possesses.

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#208

Post by lmm »

jonstokes wrote: post #119

Ok, this is a fantastic piece that says a lot of useful and thoughtful things, some of them critical about the priorities of the SF startup scene. And what are a nontrivial portion of the HN comments doing? Complaining that he was unfair to Elon freaking Musk!! This is exactly the sort of techno-douchebaggery that the author is writing about, so way to prove his point, nimrods. The one redeeming quality of such comme…

You do realise that your own comment is worse than those you're complaining about? Be civil, be constructive; if you feel like particular comments are unhelpful, suggest improvements or downvote them. Don't just call them names.

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#209

Post by tptacek »

idlewords wrote: post #133
kasey_junk wrote: post #124

Let me start by saying I love idlewords writing and largely agree with his proposed rules (even if he did demonize something like 1/3 of my working life with 1 sentence). > Ban on Third-Party Ad Tracking My experience in finance makes me skeptical that this will play out the way that he hopes. Most of the financial regulation in the world started with laws "average people can understand". Things like Banks should hav…

I think this is a very trenchant criticism of what I said, and I appreciate you not taking offense at me! For a) I imagine data sharing is fine, except that you can't share behavioral data about users, and you can't use any of the shared data for advertising. That said, I know very little about how publisher networks work and would appreciate pushback. b) is unfortunately quite right. If you're sufficiently pessimist…

I'm still a bit confused about how right-to-download helps non-nerds. I think I have a minor allergic reaction to things that are (a) so hard to implement that they raise barriers to newcomers and (b) only help the nerd class.

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#210

Post by nine_k »

raceyT wrote: post #143
krisdol wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intent-driven ads are far more relevant to a site's audience than hand-picked, static ones. They have much higher CTR and conversion rates, when done right. You're asking sites to remove sources of income that people find relevant in exchange for ads that some higher up in marketing thinks relates to its users. Not all publishers subscribe to the low quality Google AdExchange. In fact, they typically have a variety o…

There are lots of automatic ways to make money like this, even more so on the cost side of a business. They are always going to look great on a spreadsheet but what you're missing is the opportunity cost of all the people that are turned off by the experience. They will fade away in a manner that's harder to measure than CTR.

I suppose that the decrease in daily / weekly / monthly audience is easily detectable.

Probably it's not very realistic to hand-pick individual ads, unless you run a very niche site. Probably it's still realistic to hand-pick the automatic ad streams you'd agree to show. I suspect the major ad networks allow you to be quite specific.

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