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Are we the baddies?

geohot.github.io

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Re: Are we the baddies?

#321

Post by Barrin92 »

alecco wrote: post #253
protocolture wrote: post #46

>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.

> You can literally go outside and talk to people. Only in small towns with high trust societies, sadly.

Sorry what? You can go out clubbing and drinking and meet 50 new people in Berlin every night. Pretty cheap too, even these days.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#322

Post by davidee »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #255

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.

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).

Re: Are we the baddies?

#323

Post by zdw »

bigyabai wrote: post #4

> 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.

Thanks for parroting https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...

Re: Are we the baddies?

#324

Post by yurishimo »

anonzzzies wrote: post #191
jksflkjl3jk3 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not where I live I never understand why people make comments like this and leave it to the reader to guess where they live. Your profile has your email and linkedin, so it's not like you're trying to stay anonymous. And to your point, local taxis being less expensive is unusual in my travels from 50+ countries. Uber/Grab/Bolt/Gojeck/Maxim are almost always significantly cheaper and more reliable in my experience, e…

Not GP but I didn't mention either; Netherlands.

Last time I took an Uber from Eindhoven out 30km to a neighbouring village, the driver showed up and gave me shit for not calling the taxi company. See, he was a taxi driver as well and used the same car for both services. He said that Uber didn't pay enough and that it was unfair I was _only_ paying €50 for the trip. I told him that I was just paying for a service I ordered and wished him luck. If the driver wants to make more money, he should stop accepting Uber offers because he's certainly not winning over hearts and minds by complaining to the clientele he is supposedly trying to convince to pay 50% more for the exact same ride.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#325

Post by pydry »

tossandthrow wrote: post #288
pydry wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1934 people were trained on the job. This was as true in the WPA as it was outside. What changed is not the newfound impossibility of doing that, just the reluctance of employers to pay for it and the willingness of the government to indulge their insatiable demand for cheap, pretrained labor.

I find it difficult to believe that the price of training has not gone up. I am not as convinced as you. When training is 7 year degree to achieve some specialization it simply is not for everyone. Also, ubi is not anti work - it is merely the acknowledgement that not everyone have salary worthy things to do. The alternative it havy financialization as in you receive a tip when you bring down you neighbors garbage.

there are many reasons to be against a job guarantee but the presumption that every potential job nowadays requires a 7 year degree is a particularly bad one.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#326

Post by alganet »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #318
alganet wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 YouTub…

> How far can you game a profiling algorithm? I think pretty far. I expect the future involves nonsense layer full of AI slop being read and written by AI's. Mapping it onto the actual humans will be difficult unless you have a preexisting trust relationship with those humans such that they can decrypt the slop into your actual communications.

I think it's more difficult than it seems.

If I were an algorithm-profiling company I would try to anchor my profilings in the real world (what kinds of people I talk to, about what, what kinds of places I visit, what are the opinions of others on me, etc). LLM garbage would be just to draw voluntary participation in potential surveys.

It takes a particularly paranoid and stubborn individual to make the necessary efforts to consider what kinds of profiling could be done with such anchored data, and even more effort to probe it enough to acquire some knowledge on how it works.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#327

Post by diggan »

dalyons wrote: post #277
diggan wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It used to be that you could use Booking and get a cheaper reservation than using the hotels own website. Today, it seems to be the opposite, the prices for hotels are almost always cheaper on their website than Booking...

This is a common online trope, but has almost never been true for me when I’ve checked. (US domestic ~4 star hotels) Direct is more or at least equal to the aggregator prices.

Ah, never traveled to the US, my experience is from Europe, South America and Asia, could explain the difference :)

Re: Are we the baddies?

#328

Post by [deleted] »

Y-bar wrote: post #315
nilamo wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that tips are tax free in the USA, they are unlikely to be going away.

If tips are no longer taxed, does that mean that they no longer count towards medicare, sick pay, pensions and such?

[deleted]

Re: Are we the baddies?

#329

Post by alganet »

afiodorov wrote: post #112
vntok wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What car you want to buy is just one tiny part of the transaction. The salesman can and will manipulate you on everything else from price to warranty, from payment schedule to cross-sale rebates, from maintenance subscription to registration fees, from additional options to spare tires.

You're right, they can try to manipulate you on a thousand tiny things. My counter-argument is that at a certain point, it's not worth the mental energy to fight over what amounts to pennies on the dollar. Anecdotally, when I bought my car recently, they forgot to even offer me the extended warranty they'd planned to push. I find it funny to think it was so minor, even they forgot to care.

> it's not worth the mental energy to fight over what amounts to pennies

Maybe it's not about the money. Maybe I see it challenging profiling algorithms as entertainment.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#330

Post by makeitdouble »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #306
makeitdouble wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The salesman can cut the car you want from your buying options, or stick conditions on it that will make up for the difference with the other models. That's what we're seeing with Youtube for instance: your choice is to pay Youtube's price for Premium (litteraly paying to not get bullied), sit through all the ads in the world, or get three strikes after playing the ad-blocking cat and mouse game for long enough. Of c…

> get three strikes after playing the ad-blocking cat and mouse game for long enough I've never encountered this. What is it?

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/14129599?hl=en

Depending on when you look at it, it might be worked around or fully enforced again, it comes and go, but at least Youtube doesn't seem willing to give up that stance entirely.

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