Are we the baddies? • Hacker News Board

Re: Are we the baddies?

#511

Post by account42 » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 11:19 AM UTC

aydyn wrote: post #379

alextingle wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you buy a game on steam, you own it for real. How so? If Steam goes away, then so does your game. That's not ownership. Just because they have carefully and honestly fostered a lot of trust in their game rental service, doesn't make it not a game rental service.

If Steam itself goes bankrupt, Gabe himself said you'll still retain access to your games.1 Yes its a non-legally binding promise, but Steam has earned that trust. Also Steam isn't going away, so for these reasons that is "how so". 1. https://web.archive.org/web/20100605062932/http://forums.ste...

Ah cool, so an alleged promise made to one user makes it all OK and we should stop worrying and just buy more.

Even if Gaben "money drives the community" Newell did make that promise and was sincere, he's going to be gone in a couple of decades at most and likely not in control of Valve before that.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#512

Post by popoflojo » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 12:20 PM UTC

lazystar wrote: post #357

Workaccount2 wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is the core problem laid out: 1.) Owner needs workers and wants to make the position attractive. 2.) Owner is given the option to enable tips, and entice works with "Pay, plus tips!" 3.) Owner doesn't pay tips, patrons do. 4.) Workers blame patrons, not owner, for not tipping. 5.) Patrons feel guilty and tip. Workers make pretty good money from this, and enjoy the job more. In a way it's kind of like a social mi…

as someone who survived on tips for 2 1/2 years while studying comp sci, you're missing one key detail. tips introduce a situation where harder/faster-paced workers get a higher pay per hour than workers with average productivity. a pizza driver that optimizes their routes and memorizes stop light patterns in their delivery zone will get more deliveries per hour than that of a new hire. so even though they work the s…

There are plenty of non tipping ways to reward hard workers. Managers can track performance and reward it through bonuses and/or wage increases.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#513

Post by pydry » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 12:50 PM UTC

tossandthrow wrote: post #374

pydry wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is not the presumption - I trust that you are enough of a non-LLM to properly understand the message behind the words.

This is what you wrote:

>When training is 7 year degree to achieve some specialization

>properly understand the message behind the words

You should probably say what you mean if you want people to hear what you mean. I dont have the patience to listen to metaphors.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#514

Post by lotsofpulp » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 2:21 PM UTC

vntok wrote: post #441

lotsofpulp wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I think most extended warranties I've noticed are beneficial. If this were true, it would result in a loss for the issuer of the warranty.

Interesting. Can you expand a bit on what your reasoning is so we can understand where you come from?

I guess I should have specified financial benefit.

You wouldn't pay someone else to insure a common vegetable, because it is so low cost that if it turned out to be bad, you would just buy another one (or have bought extra as your insurance).

When you buy from Walmart/Target/Amazon/Best Buy, they will try to sell you insurance for a $30 toaster or other cheap appliance. Again, most people will not buy this because they will believe the appliance will work sufficiently long or that the warranty process will be too time consuming, or otherwise decide that just quickly replacing the cheap appliance with another is the preferred way to insure it.

The insurance seller is a business and has to earn more than what they pay out for claims (or at least to make payroll if it is a mutual insurance company). Otherwise, they are going to lose money over time and go out of business. If you financially benefit from it, then you are either lucky, or had an information edge over the insurance underwriter.

Of course, if you get peace of mind from buying insurance, and count that as a benefit, then most insurance is beneficial in that case.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#515

Post by lotsofpulp » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 2:35 PM UTC

_9ptr wrote: post #424

lotsofpulp wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I think most extended warranties I've noticed are beneficial. If this were true, it would result in a loss for the issuer of the warranty.

That's not how insurance works

I meant financially benefit. See

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44490667

Insurance seller has to earn at least enough for payroll, so at least some of the premiums go towards that instead of any money received from claims.

Investment earnings cancel out because both the insurance buyer and insurance seller have access to same returns via broad market index funds. I.e. you can self insure and get the same returns on your savings that the insurance seller is going to get if you gave them a premium.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#516

Post by phil21 » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 4:04 PM UTC

kevincox wrote: post #458

phil21 wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But yeah… tipping has very little to do with “work harder => more pay.” You need to examine your logic more. Or just, like… have a few beers with a single person who’s ever worked in a restaurant as an adult. I have had more than a few conversations with tipped service workers. Some are even friends of mine. While a lot of what you say is true (the manipulation of shifts and spotting/monopolizing desirable customer…

I think the case of tips "regulars" does definitely make more sense then in a lot of other situations as the customers can make a good evaluation of their service. But even then a simple per-drink bonus or commission would serve this purpose without shifting the decision and responsibility to customers. The faster and more skilled bartender would naturally receive more orders because they are serving faster and becau…

Sure. That might work, but the worker has zero control of implementing such a policy. They do have control over doing things that increase their tips. You work in the frameworks available to you, not some idealized version of the world.

Tilting at windmills doesn't pay the bills.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#517

Post by bigyabai » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 4:19 PM UTC

echaozh wrote: post #485

bigyabai wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Tips are not a reliable source of income (I am an American who also survived on tips). 2. Only people working front get tips. If you have a lazy busboy working front for the most talented chef in the world, the chef pockets $0.00/hr in tips. 3. If any computer science job ever contemplated adding tipping to my compensation package, I'd go get my pink slip within the hour.

What do you think of the donations to open source project maintainers or photographers or musicians? What about gifts sent to tiktok hosts? I'm from a country where there're no tips, and I'm not defending tips at all. But I do think the tiktok gifts are basically tips right? Is it a good idea to live off the gifts like the tips?

Donations aren't tips. I'm an Open Source maintainer as well, and I don't ever expect to be paid for my work. It's a hobby, whereas the code I write at work is what people pay me to do. Growing up, I knew a fairly popular musician from the internet-era, and I'll just say she made less money than I did working the cash register. She worked more hours, too.

Tipping, as an American culture, exists to reward "above and beyond" behavior from service workers. Tiktok performers, bedroom musicians and FOSS developers aren't service workers, and most of the time they aren't salaried either. Expecting to live off those wages is an unfortunate mistake.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#518

Post by soco » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 4:36 PM UTC

phil21 wrote: post #516

kevincox wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the case of tips "regulars" does definitely make more sense then in a lot of other situations as the customers can make a good evaluation of their service. But even then a simple per-drink bonus or commission would serve this purpose without shifting the decision and responsibility to customers. The faster and more skilled bartender would naturally receive more orders because they are serving faster and becau…

Sure. That might work, but the worker has zero control of implementing such a policy. They do have control over doing things that increase their tips. You work in the frameworks available to you, not some idealized version of the world. Tilting at windmills doesn't pay the bills.

We are arguing exactly against those frameworks, while your argument, while true, is only repeating that one can do well within that framework. I'm european and I find annoying the fake smiles, the fake chitchat and the deep cleavage I will get from a tips-motivated worker. Basically this softcore prostitution is the only way letting them get some bread on the table, within that framework you refuse to change. The manager definitely sees the unskilled bartender and could raise the pay of the skilled one any time, and if they don't notice the difference I believe the bar has bigger problems anyway. So no, it's not the only framework available, and the way it's slowly reaching nowadays europe because that "capitalism means individualism" is just garbage to me. We've always lived in tribes, only today's social media is spreading those lies for pure political power.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#519

Post by phil21 » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:18 PM UTC

jordanb wrote: post #313

jen20 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are better than they used to be because of the competition. I remember a time not that long ago where getting a minicab was nigh on impossible, and one miraculously did show up, it would be primary so the driver could try to scam you.

Not my experience using taxi call services in Chicago. Whenever I called them (before Uber) the taxi was prompt and courteous. The apps did three things that the call services did not do: 1) subsidize drivers with vc money for many years making drivers plentiful and fares cheap 2) use unlicensed cabs so they could saturate areas like Manhattan that had previously limited the amount of cabs that could operate 3) Depri…

> Not my experience using taxi call services in Chicago. Whenever I called them (before Uber) the taxi was prompt and courteous.

Not remotely my experience in Chicago, and I lived in a relatively primary service area (Wicker Park). Calling them was basically pointless, you needed to walk to a cab stand and hope there was a cab standing by if you needed to go to the airport at a weird off-peak time.

And my friends all had similar experiences to mine as well. It was a trope that you'd call dispatch and schedule a ride, and then maybe it would show up within 90 minutes of the actual time assigned. You could even listen to the dispatch radio and realize how much of a shitshow it was with cabbies assigned to a pickup ditching it for a street fare randomly. And how little dispatch cared about it all.

Uber was a night and day overnight change for the better.

The only "good" cab experiences were flag pulls from the street within short city trips. Usually the loop to back home during peak after-work or bar traffic times. Anything else was frustrating to outright unusable.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#520

Post by __MatrixMan__ » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:37 PM UTC

alganet wrote: post #491

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, well I hope that sharing your honest opinion about it turns out to be an effective strategy. But I'm afraid we'll regret not interfering more directly than that.

I think surveillance is very, very advanced. But the active meddling thing is old tricks. One should consider this combination. You can't lie to some systems, the better strategy is to be honest. You can lie to some systems, but these won't be load bearing, so why do it? I will also observe back. The active meddling thing, when observed in action, is a source of information. It could be lying to me too, predicting th…

> The active meddling thing, when observed in action, is a source of information.

Not if it's done right. If one person views a page the old-fashioned way, caches the DOM, and circulates it peer-to-peer, then whoever is weaponizing that content only has one browser fingerprint to work with, despite there being potentially thousands of users that they wish they could profile.

That's far less information to work with than the thousands of individual requests they would otherwise have to scrutinize.

The honest/dishonest distinction only comes down to whether you're going to try to protect the volunteer who grabbed the page to begin with, or whether you're going to expose them to retribution.

As for the systems you can't lie to, those you can replace with more trustworthy alternatives. This is a lot of work but it's better than suggesting that your peers be honest in ways that will harm them.

So to answer your question, no. None of the scenarios where you let your adversary know that you're working against them, and also let them know how to find and harm you, are interesting strategies for combatting surveillance.

Surveillance exists in support of targeted coercion. We should not make a target of the more honest among us. We need to protect those people most of all.