4 ms·

So many — here are a few large scale problems I think about lately. * Trustworthiness of content (text and soon photo and video) is and will be a fundamental p

So many — here are a few large scale problems I think about lately. * Trustworthiness of content (text and soon photo and video) is and will be a fundamental problem. This is the basic attack vector for national and global politics in the last few years. Anyone with a good solution would help the world immeasurably and have their pick of customers. * fall out from monetary policy in the us and Europe: take your pick, but for example - home prices in urban areas; figuring out how to house families for 1/2 or 1/3 current prices in the United States would have a lasting impact on stability and wealth creation. * the continued effectiveness of state propaganda; related to my first suggestion above. * obesity in the us and soon Western Europe. * data security - fixing large scale data breaches. * what I call long range to short range : problems too big for people to think about or accept abound, like climate change. Finding one and figuring out how to tie to short term incentives creating a positive feedback loop would be a real game changer. Oil does this all the time but usually not with good long term consequences - cf fracking turns North Dakota into a boom zone — creativity around good not pernicious cycles would be a boon for the world.

espeed 7y ago
> Trustworthiness of content (text and soon photo and video) is and will be a fundamental problem. This is the basic attack vector for national and global politics in the last few years. Anyone with a good solution would help the world immeasurably and have their pick of customers. SOS HN: Set up live early warning system for spoofed/deep fake news feeds https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20748195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20748195
- bradenb 7y ago
  This would help, but it would be nice if there was a way to somehow verify a chain of custody of media where each modification somehow added to the chain and could be independently verified. I don't really see how that could be done but it would be really amazing.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    Internet Archive on steroids?
  - vessenes 7y ago
    There is tech for this, but you also ha e to think about the Xanadu side of things - truthiness and attribution essentially. Fully validated flat earth selfie videos aren’t really any less bad than ones of questionable provenance.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
thewarrior 7y ago
For housing the big problem is it not the cost of construction but real estate prices and those are due to laws
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
folkhack 7y ago
> Anyone with a good solution would help the world immeasurably and have their pick of customers. I don't buy this. Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. are all beholden to a constant growth model - just like every other traded company that's responsible to their own board. Even in ecommerce (which is primarily my background) the players that "complain" about bots actually love the hell out of them because they eat up risk... I'm thinking about companies like Ticketmaster, Supreme, Nike, etc. They implement anti-bot measures "up to a point", which typically is a breakable CAPTCHA and validating purchase quantities to shipping addresses/payment methods (ex: only allow 4 of this hot item to be purchased with this CC number/shipping addr). These big players are where the bulk of the misinformation campaigns are happening and they've been effectively sitting on their hands because if they started booting off bad actors (bots, propagandaists, people sharing factually false information) it would hurt their new account sign-up/content creation/interaction numbers, which will eventually hurt the stock price. Here's why I say all of this... As someone who has done large-scale bot work I feel like there's a huge disconnect with things like Facebook account sign-up where it's effectively always open for someone with the basic capability to bypass a CAPTCHA. Given their resources, I absolutely believe they could easily have a higher barrier of entry when it comes to keeping people with my skillset out - they're just not interested in blocking automated sign-ups and the like. I'm convinced that the big "FAANG", or "GAFA", or whatever players can't really solve this problem because it'd probably hurt their business to cannibalize their own numbers... even if it's the right thing to do. Leadership would get kicked from boards and stuff. Ergo, the problem keeps on truckin' =(
- aledalgrande 7y ago
  Note: FB actually has a higher barrier, just not right around signup. If they detect "bot behavior" (rules vary), they freeze the account and ask for a government ID. Agree with the fact that companies "complaining" about bots, actually benefit from them. And even use them. I was looking at huge proxy servers providers and they have those same companies in their client list too.
- ridaj 7y ago
  I don't think the boards of Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit have somehow missed the message that content trustworthiness is as existential a threat to their business as their growth numbers. Just in case they hadn't gotten the point from the market, I'm sure dragging some of their CEOs to one congressional hearing after another sends a very clear signal. In terms of investment, it's also clear that they are putting a lot more resources in both engineering and content reviewer heads towards these problems every year.
zelly 7y ago
> * Trustworthiness of content (text and soon photo and video) is and will be a fundamental problem. This is the basic attack vector for national and global politics in the last few years. Anyone with a good solution would help the world immeasurably and have their pick of customers. The solution to this is just to train and use only the discriminator used in deepfake GANs. The good guys will inevitably have more compute power than the bad guys, and the discriminator will be better than the generator.
- woodson 7y ago
  Unfortunately, it’s not the solution – the discriminator is only going to work well on deepfakes produced by that particular GAN model, not the plethora of other possible models.
- somatic 7y ago
  If the fake is "pixel-perfect", then how would there be any way to tell? Your fundamental assumption is that the resolution inherent to the transmitted medium is greater than the "resolution" of the faker.
seph-reed 7y ago
> Trustworthiness of content I think this is over. Our ability to create has an inherent inverse correlation with the ability to validate authenticity. IMO, the best solution is to accept that nothing can be trusted and operate as though "facts" are in a quantum state. Maybe a thing is true, maybe not, what would be sensible to do in both circumstances? > obesity Such a good one. I don't believe humanity is going to work together for anything but if we could all look good, that'd be something. Enjoy the lives we have while we have them. At least there'd be less bickering. A couple I'd like to add: - Absolutely no form of regulation on creating sentient beings (ie spawning fuck trophies). Don't think there should be anything Orwelian, but some form of incentive needs to stop bad parenting from existing. Pretty much all problems can be improved with overall better parenting. - Becoming more open to sex and touch. The two are totally separate things, but both approached horribly. Touch is good for people and mammals in general. It's like food/water levels of healthy, but for your brain. Similarly, sex is important, and incredibly poorly taught. "Hey high-schoolers, we'll just look the other way and you can go on ahead and fuck yourselves up emotionally, K?" There's a goldmine of human happiness just beyond this threshold of getting over the whole puritan thing. Working on communication and whatnot. Saying something like "air, water, food, shelter, touch, purpose, affection" when talking about needs. -Mutual self destruction with super powers. Right now they hold all the cards. It should feel like we both have guns to each-others heads.
Beefin 7y ago
Late to the party, but obesity (and general preventable health conditions) is what I'm looking to address: http://meports.com http://meports.com

espeed 7y ago

> Trustworthiness of content (text and soon photo and video) is and will be a fundamental problem. This is the basic attack vector for national and global politics in the last few years. Anyone with a good solution would help the world immeasurably and have their pick of customers. SOS HN: Set up live early warning system for spoofed/deep fake news feeds https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20748195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20748195

bradenb 7y ago
This would help, but it would be nice if there was a way to somehow verify a chain of custody of media where each modification somehow added to the chain and could be independently verified. I don't really see how that could be done but it would be really amazing.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Internet Archive on steroids?
- vessenes 7y ago
  There is tech for this, but you also ha e to think about the Xanadu side of things - truthiness and attribution essentially. Fully validated flat earth selfie videos aren’t really any less bad than ones of questionable provenance.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

thewarrior 7y ago

For housing the big problem is it not the cost of construction but real estate prices and those are due to laws

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

folkhack 7y ago

> Anyone with a good solution would help the world immeasurably and have their pick of customers. I don't buy this. Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. are all beholden to a constant growth model - just like every other traded company that's responsible to their own board. Even in ecommerce (which is primarily my background) the players that "complain" about bots actually love the hell out of them because they eat up risk... I'm thinking about companies like Ticketmaster, Supreme, Nike, etc. They implement anti-bot measures "up to a point", which typically is a breakable CAPTCHA and validating purchase quantities to shipping addresses/payment methods (ex: only allow 4 of this hot item to be purchased with this CC number/shipping addr). These big players are where the bulk of the misinformation campaigns are happening and they've been effectively sitting on their hands because if they started booting off bad actors (bots, propagandaists, people sharing factually false information) it would hurt their new account sign-up/content creation/interaction numbers, which will eventually hurt the stock price. Here's why I say all of this... As someone who has done large-scale bot work I feel like there's a huge disconnect with things like Facebook account sign-up where it's effectively always open for someone with the basic capability to bypass a CAPTCHA. Given their resources, I absolutely believe they could easily have a higher barrier of entry when it comes to keeping people with my skillset out - they're just not interested in blocking automated sign-ups and the like. I'm convinced that the big "FAANG", or "GAFA", or whatever players can't really solve this problem because it'd probably hurt their business to cannibalize their own numbers... even if it's the right thing to do. Leadership would get kicked from boards and stuff. Ergo, the problem keeps on truckin' =(

aledalgrande 7y ago
Note: FB actually has a higher barrier, just not right around signup. If they detect "bot behavior" (rules vary), they freeze the account and ask for a government ID. Agree with the fact that companies "complaining" about bots, actually benefit from them. And even use them. I was looking at huge proxy servers providers and they have those same companies in their client list too.
ridaj 7y ago
I don't think the boards of Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit have somehow missed the message that content trustworthiness is as existential a threat to their business as their growth numbers. Just in case they hadn't gotten the point from the market, I'm sure dragging some of their CEOs to one congressional hearing after another sends a very clear signal. In terms of investment, it's also clear that they are putting a lot more resources in both engineering and content reviewer heads towards these problems every year.

zelly 7y ago

> * Trustworthiness of content (text and soon photo and video) is and will be a fundamental problem. This is the basic attack vector for national and global politics in the last few years. Anyone with a good solution would help the world immeasurably and have their pick of customers. The solution to this is just to train and use only the discriminator used in deepfake GANs. The good guys will inevitably have more compute power than the bad guys, and the discriminator will be better than the generator.

woodson 7y ago
Unfortunately, it’s not the solution – the discriminator is only going to work well on deepfakes produced by that particular GAN model, not the plethora of other possible models.
somatic 7y ago
If the fake is "pixel-perfect", then how would there be any way to tell? Your fundamental assumption is that the resolution inherent to the transmitted medium is greater than the "resolution" of the faker.

seph-reed 7y ago

> Trustworthiness of content I think this is over. Our ability to create has an inherent inverse correlation with the ability to validate authenticity. IMO, the best solution is to accept that nothing can be trusted and operate as though "facts" are in a quantum state. Maybe a thing is true, maybe not, what would be sensible to do in both circumstances? > obesity Such a good one. I don't believe humanity is going to work together for anything but if we could all look good, that'd be something. Enjoy the lives we have while we have them. At least there'd be less bickering. A couple I'd like to add: - Absolutely no form of regulation on creating sentient beings (ie spawning fuck trophies). Don't think there should be anything Orwelian, but some form of incentive needs to stop bad parenting from existing. Pretty much all problems can be improved with overall better parenting. - Becoming more open to sex and touch. The two are totally separate things, but both approached horribly. Touch is good for people and mammals in general. It's like food/water levels of healthy, but for your brain. Similarly, sex is important, and incredibly poorly taught. "Hey high-schoolers, we'll just look the other way and you can go on ahead and fuck yourselves up emotionally, K?" There's a goldmine of human happiness just beyond this threshold of getting over the whole puritan thing. Working on communication and whatnot. Saying something like "air, water, food, shelter, touch, purpose, affection" when talking about needs. -Mutual self destruction with super powers. Right now they hold all the cards. It should feel like we both have guns to each-others heads.

Beefin 7y ago

Late to the party, but obesity (and general preventable health conditions) is what I'm looking to address: http://meports.com http://meports.com