Has nothing to do with monetizing or social ill. Otherwise, soda, food, gambling, movies, etc wouldn't be allowed to advertise. And we'd ban most newspapers and cable news for being toxic for the masses.
The war on social media is simply about who gets control over people's minds.
Social media sites like Reddit, Google and even HN gave in to the elite. Facebook is holding out.
> It usually ends up either me aborting because of some dependency hell trying to get all the old versions in sync, or I get the system up, take a pleasant trip down memory lane, then 10 minutes later get annoyed by the impracticalities of it, and go back to my current system with renewed appreciation
Hah. I go a bit overboard with windows managers/desktop environments from icewm to fluxbox to KDE to GNOME. I've settled on XFCE but I have a VM solely to muck around with desktop environments and get my fix.
The worst for me is VIm color schemes. Can't seem to choose one I can stick with.
Logins for news sites was tried in the 2000s and it failed miserably. The only ones who could survive such a strategy are news institutions with a large subscriber base like WSJ or the NYTimes. But even they are struggling.
Would a login collective be any better? I highly doubt it.
> The guardian certainly has a strong editorial position, but I've never found its' reporting to be anything other than honest, well researched, and written with integrity.
You got to be kidding me. If you think the guardian has integrity then it's because you agree with their viewpoints.
They have no more integrity than foxnews does.
It's ridiculous how much certain news organizations get on a "hacker" forum.
> I put on some science video and walked away recently... came back latter and the autoplay had navigated itself deep into k00ky flat earther stuff.
That's the point of youtube autoplay. You leave it running long enough it'll go through all the videos. That's what makes youtube interesting. At least that's what made youtube deep diving interesting before all the censorship.
You go through enough books in the library and you will eventually find books on alchemy.
Also, you could turn off autoplay with a click of a button...
> (I haven't made an extensive study of this, but my impression is that the American right wing is prone to conspiracies about people or events, whereas the left wing is prone to conspiracies about institutions.)
No. Both the right wing and left wing are prone to conspiracies about people, events and institutions. The right wing sees conspiracies in institutions like the UN, EU, etc. The left wing sees conspiracies in people like Trump.
They are both the same. 10 years ago, it was the right wing claiming the saudis got obama elected. Now, it's the left wing claiming the russians got trump elected. 10 years ago, the right wingers claimed obama was born in kenya and serving the saudis. Now, the left wingers are claiming trump is working for putin and the russians.
> The article also mentions Trump speeches were more recommended. There's an innocent recommendation: people find Trump more engaging.
This is so funny. 10 years ago, mccain supporters were claiming that youtube was biased towards obama. And the media mocked mccain, palin and their supporters for being paranoid. Now it's the left wing media claiming youtube was biased towards trump. The hypocrisy of the media.
It's amazing how things flipped in a matter of a few years. 10 years ago, it was foxnews and the tea party ranting and raving about obama. Now it's the left leaning media ranting and raving about trump and social media.
> The world before complex algorithms generating clicks on the Internet was pretty biased and stupid
The way the news has been ranting about social media, you'd think it was responsible for all the world's ill. The hyperbole and just pathetic nonsense from the media the past few years has been ridiculous. From the pewdiepie nonsense to the insane coverage of trump to the current hysteria over facebook. I wish we could go back to a time when the news media didn't have such obvious agenda. It would be nice if the news industry pushed out news instead of their agenda.
> but that's often not interesting enough to write about for many journalists
If everyone was educated, thought critically and understood stats, where would news companies get their journalists from?
> Youtube’s ‘related videos’ algorithm has given rise to a generation of Flat Earth believers.
That's nonsense. There have been flat earthers long before youtube and there will be flat earthers long after. Also, the amount of flat earthers is so insignificant, but of course the media has to exploit that to push their agenda.
The guardian and the news media caused far more damage with their fake campus rape culture nonsense than silly flat earth videos.
> Despite that, I gotta say, I'm uncomfortable about the series of media 'hits' on Youtube over the past year.
The media has been attacking youtube, facebook and social media because it is marginalizing their effectiveness.
The news industry was used to having a captive audience to whom it force fed propaganda. What to read, what to think, how to vote, who to believe, etc were their domain.
Social media is allowing people to co-opt that system and seek out what they want to read, watch, etc.
I'm awestruck at how coordinated the supposed "independent" and disparate news companies are working together in this propaganda campaign. And how british media and our media are working in tandem.
Also, if anyone has the time, it would be interesting to see how many "anti social media" stories have been on HN. I'm guessing we've had an anti social media story on the frontpage of HN everyday for the past year.
You forgot the elephant in the room. Money. Everyday these writers have to make up the most outlandish "story/fake news" to get you to click to sell you ads.
"statistically useless, arbitrarily rated average of multiple human designed score scales, meant to loosely relate to some quality we want to measure, but in reality is more a game of politics and adversarial score optimization." while honest and true doesn't get the masses clicking. Honest and true doesn't get stories bumped to the frontpage of HN.
I do feel for these journalists. They are like daily vloggers who have to deal with the constant pressure of generating content every single day to make money. That's like clickbait is so rampant in both the traditional and social media.
> Point 2: There's no country with more money and infrastructure than the US.
Except our money and infrastructure is going into other sectors. China has chosen to direct their resources into this sector. Simple as that.
> Kind of like how Hollywood boomed after they pirated all the hardware whose patents could only be enforced on the east coast at that time.
Hollywood boomed when money, people and infrastructure was directed to it. It was a conscious decision made by the elites. There are tons of regulation in hollywood. It's still booming. Using your logic, hollywood should be a ghost town. Ironically, your example proves you wrong.
> I would argue that the EU is, generally, more progressive than the US when it comes to immigrants and trans folks.
Is this is the same EU where people of turkish descent who lived in germany for 3 generations are still not considered german and where european politicians of african descent get bananas thrown at them? Where in europe are trans people treated better than in the US? Or are you talking about generations of north african immigrants who are confined to ghettos in france and who are pretty much barred from any positions of power? Or are you talking about the african immigrants in spain who are pretty much relegated to rummaging through garbage or prostitution? Europe isn't a utopia people love to pretend it is. All the monkey chants and racist vitriol directed at black and asian soccer players at soccer games should make that obvious.
"While the United States is busy talking about making itself “great again” by demonizing immigrants and trans people while it continues to decline as a world power, Europe and China are expanding their forward-looking systems of high-quality transportation to position their regions to challenge American power, and prosper in the coming century."
More of that objective and quality journalism. Ignoring the grammatical mistakes, why throw in a silly quip like that? Especially considering that europe and china aren't too fond of "immigrants" or trans people.
> Even then... Where are you going to start in reading references? A random syscall or function a day?
Sure. Or browse through a bunch of them?
> think it is far more useful to e.g. read the late W. Richard Stevens' Advanced Programming in the Unix environment.
That is closer to a reference than a novice tutorial.
> It puts everything in context, provides historical background where necessary, and gives examples.
Sure. So do good references. Even man pages do.
> Reference pages are not really for brushing up, but more for the 'what was the address family field of sockaddr called again'-type of questions? Or put differently: they are external memory.
It depends on your level, experience and your competence in the material I guess. I'm not saying it's the only thing you need, but in many situations, it's the only thing you need to brush up.
And my point is that you are just offering simplification that has no merit. It's a cheap ploy I expect from silly journalists, not on HN. Regulation isn't why there is a biotech boom. As I stated, it's money, people and infrastructure.