Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Declaring War on the Web

tante.cc

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 466 posts

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#441

Post by marcus_holmes »

newaccountman2 wrote: post #426
marcus_holmes wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is actually a counter-example of what you think it is. Chairs should last generations. A chair lasting 11 years is not exemplary. A chair falling apart after a few years should be the exception, and a bad thing at that. Again, Vimes Theory: rich folks inherit furniture that their grandparents bought, and maybe need to get it re-upholstered once in their lifetime. Poor folks have to pay for new furniture…

> Chairs should last generations. A chair lasting 11 years is not exemplary. A chair falling apart after a few years should be the exception, and a bad thing at that. IDK, this feels to me more like an aspiration or desire about what furniture quality should generally be, and not really a description of what most furniture is actually like. > rich folks inherit furniture that their grandparents bought, and maybe need…

I think it's about quality rather than style. What do I know? I make ugly furniture for myself ;)

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#442

Post by winterbourne »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #332
winterbourne wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Google cuts that out completely, what incentive do websites have to not block the Google crawlers? Completely, yes, that destroys the incentive. But they can reduce it 80% or 90% or so, to the point that it's just barely worthwhile to allow their crawlers.

Suppose right now there are people making e.g. $60,000/year from their small site, or the same amount as a contributor to a medium-to-large site. If you take 90% of that, now they make $6000/year, which isn't enough to make a living, so instead they go take a job as a construction worker or a nurse or something, and then you're getting 90% of $0.

That's true, those numbers don't work out for Google. But they have essentially unlimited resources to discover the exact threshold at which that person is just barely incentivized to keep their site active. $100K/year, reduced 80% to $20K/year? Still enough for them to keep their site up part-time? Etc.

The bulk of the traffic they're referring is essentially residual profitless goodwill left over from their "don't be evil" days.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#443

Post by scottyah »

soundworlds wrote: post #114
analogpixel wrote: post #29

I feel like AI has gotten to the point where the message is: If you want to make something (art/code/music/writing) you can do it for your own enjoyment, but you aren't allowed to make money from it anymore; only the large corporations can make money from content. If you do release something creative, it'll just be fed back into the machine to be copied over and over.

As someone who simultaneously makes music professionally, and works in IT professionally, it has been really interesting watching GenAI unfold, and the diverging cultures around it. It is almost like the world is splitting into two "societies": 1. One that loves AI + Big Business + very fast Innovation and disruption 2. One that loves Artisanal work + Small Business + slower but more sustainable innovation I personal…

Most people I interact with IRL are a combo. AI + fast innovation = more small businesses. It's just an effective tool to handle other things and work on your actual job- which people have been paying a multitude of (increasingly SAAS) companies for for awhile now.

Now you can open a machine shop, write custom software to more easily track customers, orders, operations, set up a website and social media giving you more time to focus on making the parts. Heck, even using AI to track down hard to find supplies instead of spending multiple hours googling and calling people (these are real pain points).

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#444

Post by eszed »

Gormo wrote: post #395
eszed wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complaining about downvotes used to be uncouth, but whatever. :-) For what it's worth, I'm pretty "left" - at least within the HN bubble - and I like the cut of your jib. I devoutly wish that the broader "right" cared even one iota about anti-trust / anti-monopoly enforcement.

There are plenty of people who care about the underlying concerns that "anti-trust / anti-monopoly enforcement" is trying to correct, but recognize that the only mechanism ever proposed for addressing those concerns usually involves concentrating ever more power into the hands of an even larger and less accountable monopoly. The biggest error of the "left" in most of these conversations is treating political institut…

I agree with (very, very, nearly) everything you say - particularly about the naivety of the "left"'s assumptions about political interventions being necessarily well-intentioned and competent.

On the other hand, skepticism about political intervention over-corrects when it assumes or insists that government action can never be a net benefit. Even the first Trump administration produced one extraordinary success - "Operation Warp Speed" - though, ironically, their faction is too ideologically warped to claim it.

The only point of difference I would identify is that I think a democratic government is more accountable than the monied interests to which it is a necessary counter-balance - and that, historically, the US government has (albeit imperfectly) functioned as such. However, the current US regime is, as you suggest, endeavoring to place itself beyond all democratic accountability, so yeah: I can read the writing on that wall. The bitter irony, of course, is that the political movement which has delivered an historically corrupt and unaccountable executive has been built upon the support of naive skeptics. I hope they will recalibrate their assumptions accordingly.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#445

Post by imp0cat »

notepad0x90 wrote: post #413
imp0cat wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like what Google is doing, huge fan. I can't fathom why no one else is. When I search, I'm trying to find things. With what Google is doing, the AI overview gets me answers very fast. It includes links for its sources I can click on if I'm interested. Have you actually tried clicking those links and reading the sources? They can completely contradict what the AI is suggesting! I have witnessed this recently while t…

Yeah, I've seen that a few times as well, but it's more like it has one reputable link it can show you but its conclusion is based on forum posts that reference it or something. But I personally treat it like any other AI, it isn't telling me facts, it's telling me it's opinionated/flawed suggestions based on search results. I'd say it's about 60% reliable at best, but that's 60% of the time where I didn't have to op…

It can be useful IF you can spot the problems in the generated answer. What is obvious to a domain expert can confuse a regular user just searching for help.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#446

Post by stubish »

efilife wrote: post #253
stubish wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you use Cloudflare to proxy your site, there is a button to click that blocks the AI crawlers (even the free tier). It is almost as if the AI crawlers are a DDoS attack. You can't really do it any other way, since many don't respect robots.txt. At least until someone comes up with crowdsourced blacklists with few false positives.

"You can't really do it any other way" Any custom solution by a half-competent programmer filters out all web crawlers. I'm running a semi-public website for years and nothing gets past

You have heuristics, blacklists and captures. Anything else to add? Those three can all turn away legitimate traffic from public sites. Spambots have been pretending to be legitimate users for decades, and they tend to be pretty dumb. Cloudflare and other large hosts get to do heuristics pretty well, as they can aggregate data from millions of sites rather than the few an individual might run. And even they block and force captures on legitimate users, per complaints you hear here regularly.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#447

Post by ekianjo »

nunez wrote: post #199
soundworlds wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who simultaneously makes music professionally, and works in IT professionally, it has been really interesting watching GenAI unfold, and the diverging cultures around it. It is almost like the world is splitting into two "societies": 1. One that loves AI + Big Business + very fast Innovation and disruption 2. One that loves Artisanal work + Small Business + slower but more sustainable innovation I personal…

I'm almost certain there is biblical-level astroturfing happening to make camp (1) much bigger than it really is. Otherwise, Schmidt wouldn't have drowned in a sea of boos at his commencement speech at UA.

Half of the booers boo because others boo.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#448

Post by wolvesechoes »

pembrook wrote: post #417
wolvesechoes wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So called ad hominem is perfectly reasonable argument type, not personal attack. Please, don't be such a snowflake. Saying that someone is ignorant of how history really unfolded, and therefore their claims not only on how history went, but also how the future will look like, are unsound, is very rational thing to do. Also, you cannot make logical rebuttals of ideas , as logic is concerned with relationship inside fo…

I find it amusing you keep insulting me as "ignorant" of the past while all your points rest on the Golden Age Fallacy. You seem to have invented a fanciful storybook idea of how the average person lived before the industrial revolution, and have ignored every single one of the downsides and discounted all of the upsides of the past 200 years. There's no further argument to be had though, because yours is not a ratio…

First, there is no such thing as Golden Age fallacy.

Second, you created a strawman just to feel better.

> have ignored every single one of the downside

I didn't. I said your claims are non-trivial, and enumerated some examples of downsides created by past technical revolutions. There were upsides, there were downsides. It was you who have claimed that "99% are better off". I never claimed anything like that, nor anything that could be considered an opposite..

> You believe a past you never experienced was better

Point me to the exact place where I expressed such belief.

> No logical rebuttal I waste time assembling can refute a fantasy world

You couldn't assemble logical rebuttal because the issue at stake is material, not logical. Learn the difference.

I get it, you are a fragile snowflake that cannot bear criticism, but please, don't put words into my comments even though you cannot find them there.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#449

Post by deadlocked »

account42 wrote: post #365
JohnBooty wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think that AI could actually free up time in your life in other areas, so that you could spend more time doing the things you love like making furniture? Or maybe help you directly in your furniture-making, by perhaps helping you to research things? Please don't misunderstand: my point is not "AI is good." It is problematic in many ways. My point is that I think the "AI versus actually doing cool human-crafted…

No, because the machine consumes all of your time that it can take without literally killing you. If you manage to free some time somewhere, the machine will adapt and eat it up. We have so-called developed countries talking about raising the retirement age and cutting holidays, that's the "future" we are living in.

I don’t disagree with your overall point but developed countries are raising their retirement ages because they’re trying to stave off pension crises. It’s the surprising alternative to taxing corporations and the ultra-wealthy appropriately.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#450

Post by tim333 »

Gormo wrote: post #412
tim333 wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The multinational companies are a fair bit outside democratic control. If one country bans or restricts them they can operate from some other one.

But in the present moment, it seems like countries are themselves even more outside democratic control than multinational companies are. The mechanisms of democratic accountability in political institutions are today are demonstrably dysfunctional and broken, if they ever really worked at all, whereas multinational companies are at least somewhat beholden to market pressures. Sure, they can engage in jurisdiction sho…

Dunno. In democracies you can still vote the bastards out, even if the process is imperfect.

The age verification thing was initially a UK project and people there broadly support it https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/54405-eight-months-on-thre...

the others copied

Post reply on HN