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Things that I think will be important in the next decade

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Re: Things that I think will be important in the next decade

#211

Post by Thorrez »

__float wrote: post #202
Thorrez wrote: post #144

The section titles are pretty funny. It's almost as if they were chosen to specifically disappoint cypherpunks. > A New Private Social Platform Cypherpunk: Signal! Tor! Riot! Mark: Small groups of people who know each other. > Decentralizing Opportunity Cypherpunk: Bitcoin! Peertube! IPFS! Mastadon! Namecoin! Scuttlebutt! Mark: Products for small businesses. > The Next Computing Platform Cypherpunk: Ethereum! Urbit!…

You give a lot of weight to cryptocurrency/blockchain/similar tech, and there's a lot more out there than that. I'm still waiting to see one reasonably decent application of a blockchain, and remarkably few of the things you mentioned provide much more than opportunities for scams and speculation.

While I do have a certain interest in some of those technologies, the character "Cypherpunk" was not autobiographical.

Yeah, a lot of blockchain stuff seems quite impractical and motivated by pump-and-dump opportunities. But if I close my eyes, I can almost imagine a reality where the blockchain tech is useful and widespread.

Re: Things that I think will be important in the next decade

#213

Post by dang »

vl wrote: post #200
dang wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always curious about claims that HN is degenerating. Where are those dissenting opinions of which you speak? I took a look, and didn't find any. I did see several early comments by your account, including its very first one, that were downvoted. Which comments were downvoted vs. not seemed consistent with what would get downvoted today, though today they'd probably get downvoted more—probably because there are ma…

It’s degenerating in multiple aspects: Fewer constructive discussions due to aggressive downvoting based not on the quality of argument, but on the opinion expressed. More junk on the front page, this is general trend in attention economy, so somewhat unavoidable. One of the telling things is structure of the titles. Few years ago titles where more informative, now more clickbaity on average.

The problem is that these perceptions are very much in the eye of the beholder. As the saying goes, things have always been getting worse.

If anyone can come up with an objective measure for any of this, I'd be interested. As far as I can tell, though, these perceptions are strongly affected by the fact that the things that we dislike make a much stronger impression than the rest of what we see.

From my perspective, the downvoting isn't more aggressive than it used to be, there isn't more junk on the front page than there used to be (though there might be more ideologically conflictual material, since society is moving in that direction), and the titles aren't more baity than they used to be, since we edit most of the bad ones. I'm biased, though, and conditioned by the moderation job. The interesting question is whether there's a way to get beyond such biases.

Re: Things that I think will be important in the next decade

#214

Post by Klonoar »

advaita wrote: post #28
Cookingboy wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't think privacy legislation would make much headway, simply for the reason that vast majority of people outside of the HackerNews crowd don't care about it. When people say they care about privacy, most of the time they mean they care about anonymity, as in privacy from people who knows them personally. They don't want their internet search history to be known by friends or family or coworkers, but the…

This, exactly this. I have been trying to convert a bunch of my non-tech social network to start using privacy respecting services (DDG/Signal/Tutanota primarily) and have seen more of apathy than pushback. People seem to have no qualms about their search history/messaging being analyzed/indexed/used for targeting as long as they can keep using those services free.

Tutanota has a subpar UI/UX, and people like shiny. You won't get the masses with that.

DDG is valiant, but doesn't give the same "read my mind" feeling that Google has people used to. I see few people stick with it due to this.

Signal has proven itself as a great product in many ways, but people opt for the convenience that other messengers provide. The Signal crew seems to understand this, though, and slowly be working towards ways to match that. They'll (eventually, IMO) succeed for this reason - more "privacy respecting" entities need to take this route and understand that you will not get users or attention solely on espousing privacy rights.

Re: Things that I think will be important in the next decade

#215

Post by AndrewDucker »

nikolay wrote: post #165
bitexploder wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did have a hard time taking any of what he wrote seriously. It was not thought provoking for me and I felt it wasn’t deep or interesting. It’s interesting in the sense that it is useful to know where FB may be headed, but when I think of Facebook all I see is another advertising company looking for more ways to put ads in front of captive eyeballs.

One thing I can't understand is why Facebook is still around. But, at the same time, Twitter is still around, too. I guess people got tired switching platforms.

If I want to communicate with a bunch of my friends, going back 30 years, it's where I have to go.

I could, I guess, go back to running mailing lists or manual methods of keeping track of contact details and sending things directly to people.

But short of that there's no easier way for me to keep up with friends who are distributed around the planet.

Re: Things that I think will be important in the next decade

#217

Post by FreedomToCreate »

nikolay wrote: post #154

I think Zuck is too full of himself. People often get confused that their success means that they are wise, and that we should listen to them. Should we as well follow the thought leadership of drug cartels and the Saudi monarchs?

Well he has the financial power to influence change in the world, so even if he may be someone whose insight you don't find useful, he is someone you should hear out. At least by listening you will have some idea of what he intends to do with his power, and from there you can decide if your actions will aid or not in whatever change Zuck decides to act on. For example, from this post it is clear the VR will be a big component of FBs future. From this you can do what you believe is a better path for VR and use your bit of influence by not providing money to FBs VR efforts (remove all FB VR apps(including Beat Saber), buy from Oculus competitors, etc...)

Re: Things that I think will be important in the next decade

#218

Post by keiferski »

dang wrote: post #213
vl wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s degenerating in multiple aspects: Fewer constructive discussions due to aggressive downvoting based not on the quality of argument, but on the opinion expressed. More junk on the front page, this is general trend in attention economy, so somewhat unavoidable. One of the telling things is structure of the titles. Few years ago titles where more informative, now more clickbaity on average.

The problem is that these perceptions are very much in the eye of the beholder. As the saying goes, things have always been getting worse. If anyone can come up with an objective measure for any of this, I'd be interested. As far as I can tell, though, these perceptions are strongly affected by the fact that the things that we dislike make a much stronger impression than the rest of what we see. From my perspective,…

While I think "degenerating" is a strong word, I do think there is a noticeable drop in the quality of comments since a decade ago. I don't have any hard data on this, but I think it's fairly obvious if you dig around in the archive. There used to be a more academic and countercultural feeling to commentary, as well.

Maybe some metrics to investigate are: number of words per comment, vocabulary level of the average comment [1], and so on. While neither of these are solely indicative of quality, I think they are something to consider.

[1] http://www.englishprofile.org/wordlists/text-inspector

Re: Things that I think will be important in the next decade

#219

Post by ralfd »

nikolay wrote: post #154

I think Zuck is too full of himself. People often get confused that their success means that they are wise, and that we should listen to them. Should we as well follow the thought leadership of drug cartels and the Saudi monarchs?

> Should we as well follow the thought leadership of drug cartels and the Saudi monarchs?

Yes? Maybe not follow them morally, but a drug cartel lord will have more insight in leading a multi-national organization than me.

Re: Things that I think will be important in the next decade

#220

Post by gcpwnd »

cmdshiftf4 wrote: post #52

>"at some point in the 2020s, we will get breakthrough augmented reality glasses that will redefine our relationship with technology." Constant video surveillance, direct-to-eyes on-glass advertising, targeted advertising beamed on every approved spot, interests profiling via retina movements/focus and God knows what else will undoubtedly come about if AR glasses become "cool" and ubiquitous like mobile phones. Maybe…

The AR section was the funniest. I think China is more likely to build powerful products here than anyone else, the question is whether they see a need or not. IMHO AR requires a revolution in lots of other areas to be useful for the wide masses.
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