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He means in politics you don't need to bet on the winning horse, you can just bribe him after he wins. Or bet on both.

Sure but like… he’s just some fucking guy on a tech comment thread (as are we all). You don’t think the professional bribe guys know a thing or two about doing bribes? Nah. The people who won wouldn’t take their money. It had to be those losers.

This is not a story about people being bad at bribing, it’s a story about The people rejecting candidates who were open to taking those bribes. Not necessarily because they took crypto money, more because shit policy positions usually come in sets, and we’re not into it.


I mean that receiving election funding generally just correlates with winning and it doesn’t cause winning.

Everyone wants to write checks to the winner, because they think they will win. But writing checks to some random candidate doesn’t result in them suddenly winning.


> The people rejecting candidates who were open to taking those bribes

The people voted for candidates who were openly taking bribes from other people.

> You don’t think the professional bribe guys know a thing or two about doing bribes?

Crypto bros know better and wont hire the professionals


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I understand the frustration but you realize how brazen the US is about bribes right? It's not a bribe unless you say "I'm giving you this money as a bribe." That's the legal standard SCOTUS has declared.

Yeah, for sure. That’s why I vote for candidates that refuse PAC money from crypto and otherwise. This goof is lazily and without evidence asserting that there exists no good option. I dunno if they wanna just be smug or if they’re actively trying to dissuade participation, but I don’t need it either way.

FPGAs won't rebuild fast enough for it to matter vs software simulation I'd wager. Even FPGA-in-CPU has been a dream for decades and there you have more time for some workloads, still never was commercially viable for general computing.

There was research a few years back that tried doing something like this with an FPGA, and they found that their algorithm actually exploited defects in the particular chip (not the model, the actual single specific chip) they were using to use electrical interference for computation that shouldn't have worked on paper. They could not reproduce their design on another FPGA of the same model from the same lot.

This the type of guy that will suggest paper.ly as a better name with a straight face and then we wonder why the internet is turning to shit

People used to tell kids to not go to a shady part of town while they spent their afternoons outside unsupervised. Can parents not tell kids to not go to certain websites? We still went to the shady part of town and the kids will still go to 4chan but at least we don't need to give away freedoms. Such erosion of freedom for the common person because parents can't have an awkward conversation is irritating.

I don't remember who said it, but protecting children isn't the end goal, it's tracking adults.

I'm moving away from that line of thinking. We can discuss how poorly formulated this law is, and the implications for privacy of internet control bills, and the resulting eroding of our freedom of speech. It's correct to be suspicous of attempts to regulate the internet. But I'm becoming increasingly convinced that "for the sake of the children" such measures are necessary. The reality is that most kids these days have basically zero restrictions on internet exposure, and it's frying their brains[1]. Casual warnings from parents won't cut it. Not that they don't have the ultimate responsibility, but as in every other area of child rearing, they need help from the wider society they live in.

[1] I'm not going to quote studies, but plenty exist. I think it's pretty self evident to everyone here how bad internet can be for the mental health even of adults, let alone children with developing minds.


4chan is probably one of the least brain damaging sites kids can go to these days. It has porn and stupid memes, true. But so does google if you turn the safe search off. It's the corporate run sites and services with ai powered recommendation engines that are the most problematic. Infinite scroll sites like reddit or tiktok are what really fucks up your brain. I used to frequent 4chan as a kid back in the day when it was truly a wild corner of the internet and I turned out just fine.

Low quality porn at that. Their size limits and board post limits keep it that way. Only /gif/ and one other board even permit sound. That is hateful against the visually impaired.

I agree with you about infinite scroll. I don't know you so i couldn't possibly comment on your other claim...

And all we know about is you believe the truth is a misspelled cake, so there we go.

Hard disagree. I think the control should stay with the parents where it already is. They can decide whether or not to put protections in place or whether or not to hand them a device at all.

We don't put protections on kids walking out the front door, and there's plenty of theoretical dangers there too. Let the parents educate their children.


The evidence shows they don't have sufficient control. Parents these days clearly are unequal to the task, i'm passing no judgement just observing.

>We don't put protections on kids walking out the front door

My view is that we most certainly ban and/or heavily discourage children from entering certain places and talking to random strangers. There are many safeguards in the real world, there is simply not enough in the internet.

I don't say this lightly. I am very firmly against the nanny state, and i feel equally strongly in parental rights. I've made comments in the past against these laws but i feel it's the only way forward. The only question that remains is how to best implement such policies to minimize the inevitable erosion of our privacy.

I don't like it, but that's how it is.


This may be true but the laws already exist for parents and legal guardians. To me this reeks of focusing on the wrong aspects to obtain tracking of adults. If parents are not doing their job then prosecute them for it. Or fine them if money is the goal.

"~You are a bad parent. Insert $500. Brought to you by Carls Jr."


> The evidence shows they don't have sufficient control.

What evidence is that? Who gets to say what's sufficient?

Unless there is a high probability that an alleged lack of control will negatively other people than the family in question, I don't think it should be the government's business to police.


You seem to be under the impression that having held an opinion and changing it means the new opinion is better by default, but that's not true.

In my mind it is. I understand both sides of the debate. I'm not switching one set of beliefs for something i believe is inferior, but i'm still open to hearing arguments why i'm wrong. Nobody has responded with anything more persuasive then "it's not my problem, why are you bothering me".

So the solution is effective parental controls. Government mandated age verification isn't parental control, and is unlikely to be very effective.

That means making it possible for parents to actively block bad websites, and making that hard to circumvent.


Internet filters exist. I think we should legislate them, making it mandatory for children, or a similar solution.

Recently in the U.S. news a parent was convicted of murder because they facilitated making weapons to their child who then committed a school shooting. They didn't give their child weapons and tell them to go do it, they just didn't keep them away. This is a good trend that I hope continues and will actually help prevent school shootings. Parents are responsible for their children. If children are frying their brains due to Internet exposure, similarly it's the parents fault, and they should be held liable for child abuse in the same manner as if they committed other negligence.

Someone at school has parents who aren't watching their children and allowing them unrestricted Internet access? This is where the bounty-hunter private-right-of-action morality-police laws that seem to be gaining traction can be put to some actual good use instead of, for example, hunting down trans people in Kansas. If someone's child is showing other children inappropriate material because their parents are negligent, the other parents should be able to take those parents to court and recover damages if they can collect evidence. Once parents are fined for letting their children roam with an unrestricted Internet connection it'll stop pretty quick.

> they need help from the wider society they live in.

Help that is not material support (e.g. paying hospital bills, babysitting, etc.) is usually interference.

> I think it's pretty self evident to everyone here how bad internet can be for the mental health even of adults

Agreed, but I can handle myself on the internet (my parents did their job and I am also not a dog and know the difference between a screen and a real object), and shouldn't be tracked with verification nonsense because someone else can't.


Do you have children?

I do. I also grew up on 4chan because I didn’t have an involved parent, and I lived in the suburbs where finding friends to just “go outside and play” wasn’t an option. Consuming that content was genuinely hurtful and probably forever altered my psyche. I have the means and knowledge, in technical skill and life experience, to know how these things work, and protect my kids from that. Most people don’t.

Which threads affected you the most? rekt? or perhaps all threads in /pol/? What changed you and how are you different?

I admit watching and hearing the videos of children being live organ harvested was a bit rough on me. Most try to say those are fake as a coping mechanism but sadly they are very real and it occurs in every state/province of every country 24/7. It's a massive business. There are rescue orgs that try to intervene but they are almost always too late.


4chan was pretty cool, one of the best sites there ever was. It has had the most impact on the internet. Reddit is basically few guys wanting to make money off of a PC 4chan, and we know the impact Reddit has. The content Reddit had for YEARS was basically recycled 4chan, the topics of certain subreddits were totally inherited from 4chan boards, while losing the main cool thing about 4chan, anonymity.

Haven’t you considered that the fact you were exposed to these things made you who you are today am able to say that with conviction. If you had been shielded from the reality on human extremism you would not.

Vouched, because this was going to be my counterpoint as someone who had the same circumstances as the grandparent.

Despite the enormously heinous stuff I've seen on that site, it has made me a better writer, developed my critical thinking skills, and given me a perspective on the world and its people that wouldn't have existed without.

It also introduced me to many different things and developed my taste beyond measure.

The massive downside, that I suspect the grandparent still wrestles with, is integrating all of depravity of humankind into a coherent world view without falling into cognitive dissonance between the idealized and constructed world with an onslaught of information on the actual reality of it.

It's sort of like looking into the Epstein files and having to decide one's reaction to them:

- crushed by despair at the state of things leading to nihilism and depression

- deciding to ignore it all, and continuing to go on about one's life without integrating it

- acceptance, normalization, and corruption

- a secret fourth option that reaffirms you, using that news as fuel for whatever ends in the hope you can improve the world even if just a little bit, despite how ugly it is

And so on.


Should 4chan or something similarly extreme be recommended reading for children/adolescents to understand the horrors of the world then?

I would bet that some young people will be as reflective and independently minded as you were to integrate the material into their experience and be better off for it. Some (like me, because I was thin-skinned) won't and it will stress them out or traumatize them instead. Does that make them lesser human beings for not being capable of bettering themselves from seeing the unfiltered truth on their own?

For all the benefit of 4chan, and I do say there is some benefit only after having grown into an adult with better critical thinking skills and years of therapy, it self-selects for a certain type of poster capable of lurking enough, following the norms and having a thick skin. Not everyone will clear that bar and it's unreasonable to think that all young people will turn out like yourself having immersed themselves in it. Some could end up wasting a lot of time baited into petty arguments, or worse.


Raising children is hard but assuming everyone has to sacrifice their rights so your job is easier means everyone means everyone loses long term.

Or this should be done at point of sale, like we do with all controlled substances.

We don't sell bottles containing alcohol and then expect to filter the alcohol out if the child wants to drink from it. We have two different bottles: alcoholic bottles and non-alcoholic bottles. If you are a child, you cannot purchase the former.

Stop selling unrestricted computing devices to children. Require a person to be 18+ to purchase an unrestricted internet device. Make it clear that unrestricted internet access, like alcohol and nicotine (and the list goes on) is harmful to children. That resolves 90% of the problem.

And lets be fair, the problem isn't the children. Children want what all their peers have. The problem isn't their peers. The problem is the parents. Give the spineless parents a simpler way to say no to their children, and the overall problem goes away.


A big part of being police is the cosplay of being in the army. Why do you think airsoft is so popular?

I just had to reply because this is one of the most important things to me and I didn't put it in words before but you said it perfectly. Down to the Google example which is the one always on my mind. Humans really are all the same.

You think the government knows better how to identify land that is profitable than private builders? Why? Or is this one of those opinions based on "is OK for the state to pay for it because there's infinite money for my pet project"?

Because I grew up in the UK and there is a fuckton of government housing from 60s and 70s. It is ugly but it is housing people.

Government doesn't need to make a profit due to taxation.


Hello https://cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/publications/abstract.asp?index=1...

UK public housing is widely known for being shit. Unsafe, puts all the poor people together in a block. There's bunch of crime, and your kids will be likely to stay stuck there or go to jail due to bad influences.

Social housing should be sprinkled around it has been found. So nice example of what I was saying.


I would rather have more housing than less though. Government can build it at scale without worrying about profit.

And privately built appartment blocks are awful. One cracked in Sydney had to be evacuated. Concrete cancer and water ingress issues. It is concrete enshittification.


The question is not if, but who and how.

[flagged]


Please don't introduce an isolated tragedy to engage in ideological battle.

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


> like the fine example of Grenfell tower

The Grenfell tower fire was caused by a renovation intended to improve thermal insulation.

The renovation project used an external thermal insulation system that failed to meet both the manufacturer's recommendation and building regulation requirements. The particular system was actually banned in the UK while it was installed.

Tell me why you believe this has anything to do with public housing.


Because government has a unique pricing advantage, they get additional value from the houses they build in the form of all the positive externalities and property tax revenue. So projects that wouldn't be profitable for private builders might still be worth it to the government. So it should be both.

They're just gonna pay builders a sum anyway so it's not like they need to shoulder the full upfront cost anyway.


Do you have example of another area the government has higher profit margins than private industry? I can't. And if I was going to think a government would build housing, it would be in places that are cheap and I could mass house a bunch of people, not in hip expensive cities which is what people want when they talk about this.

But surely soviet style huge blocks of tiny t0 apartments all stuck together is a dream...


> Do you have example of another area the government has higher profit margins than private industry?

Public transit. Capturing enough money from fares is difficult, maybe impossible, but it's quite profitable if you can capture the value generated by the enabled economic activity and raised property values.

The same really goes for most infrastructure. There's a reason the government operates nearly all the roads. Also the fire departments and police stations


Likely the same for public schools and maybe universities. Having educated folks in your city increases productivity and revenues and incomes.

Yes and that reason is not because they are better at doing it profitably it's because they are commons that are wildly unprofitable to do well. If you let private industry build roads you'd have nice roads in cities and dirt in the rest of the country.

In this case what people want is the reverse. They want the government to build in Austin.

The government should be involved when market forces won't solve an issue, ie no market will make it profitable to send an ambulance to a town 3h away in the mountains. You don't need affordable housing in the center of Austin just because it's trendy though.


Isn't the US example: Medicare/Medicaid? It has far less costs (i.e. more of the money spend ends up with patient care) and has a reasonably good reputation?


This is a government literally putting their money in private companies instead of using it themselves (for idk schools or infrastructure for their people instead of giving it to nvidia and tesla). It's the most literal illustration of "private" beats "public" investment. Not sure what point you tried to make.

That one 4chan troll delayed the launch of LLM like stuff by Google for about 6 years. At least that's what I attribute it to.

I'm sure I've read they support this if you email them. It's a manual action but if you're based in Europe they will have to do it by law.

> Europe they will have to do it by law.

Realistically, they can simply ignore it with no consequences.


Well I've read comments by dang saying they support it so that is besides the point. Just email and find out.

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