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Twitter will open source all code used to recommend tweets on March 31
- SketchySeaBeast 4y agoWell, that'll be interesting. I wonder if this will reveal how Elon's tweets are given special weighting?
- rvnx 4y agopseudo-code: if following: rank += 10 else if elonmusk rank += 9999999 else rank = 1
- tonetheman 4y ago[dead]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- antiquark 4y ago[flagged]
- esperent 4y agoA renowned liar with a huge audience makes a claim and suddenly we're seeing it presented as fact all over the place. Where have I seen this before?
- foderking 4y agouh huh
- rvz 4y agoI mean, I don't care about the guy but man, 13 days later you're now looking like the fool since 'the claim' has now suddenly turned into a fact. [0] [1] This also didn't age well at all. [0] https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm [1] https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm-ml https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm-ml
- drexlspivey 4y ago[flagged]
- jsheard 4y agoFebruary 21: Twitter will open source the algorithm next week https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1628122949185159168 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1628122949185159168
- lapcat 4y agoIt's like the Seinfeld episode where they're waiting 5-10 minutes for a restaurant table. March 31 is suspiciously close to April 1.
- wnevets 4y agoFSD Teslas will be out next year [1] [1] https://youtu.be/zhr6fHmCJ6k https://youtu.be/zhr6fHmCJ6k
- rrix2 4y agoSpaceX will put humans on Mars by 2024 [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-humans-on-mars-in-12-years-2012-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-humans-on-mars-in-...
- akmarinov 4y agoMight as well just link to https://elonmusk.today/ https://elonmusk.today/
- cma 4y agoPassenger rocket service opening in 2028 for less than business class on an airliner: https://www.gearbrain.com/spacex-commercial-rocket-travel-2559258245.html https://www.gearbrain.com/spacex-commercial-rocket-travel-25...
- wnevets 4y agothat will definitely happen.
- cidergal 4y ago
- KomoD 4y agoLink to the normal site instead of whatever that dog slow site is: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1636835209587949570 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1636835209587949570
- danpalmer 4y agoLooks like it's a Fediverse server that mirrors Twitter.
- KomoD 4y agoYeah and it's insanely slow, 37 seconds to load the web manifest, 35 seconds to load the HTML document and ~20 seconds per image
- INTPenis 4y agoIt's nitter, it's a privacy respecting frontend to twitter. Has nothing to do with the fediverse. And I agree, linking it on HN is just a childish way of showing you're not down with Twitter. Don't force your views on others. I run my own nitter instance for a group of friends, the secret is to never link it publicly because the traffic will destroy it.
- jonas-w 4y agoYeah, its just a slow instance. This [0] one seems to be faster. But yeah, they get "destroyed" easily, the same for piped/invidious or libreddit. [0]: https://nitter.tiekoetter.com/elonmusk/status/1636835209587949570 https://nitter.tiekoetter.com/elonmusk/status/16368352095879...
- danpalmer 4y agoAh that's a shame it's not actually integrated into the fediverse, it would be nice to be able to reference Tweets and Twitter users.
- MiguelX413 4y ago
- bakugo 4y agoLove it when people post links to nitter/mastodon/etc instances that can't handle the traffic from HN because their extreme hatred of Elon Musk stops them from making rational decisions.
- stametseater 4y agonitter is simply a better browser interface than twitter itself. It doesn't burn up my CPU doing god knows what or interrupt my reading with popups asking me to create an account.
- sokoloff 4y agoIt is plainly, demonstrably worse in this case.
- stametseater 4y agoYeah, OP should have used nitter.net instead.
- bradreaves2 4y agoDo they know that March 31 is actually a real day?
- NoZebra120vClip 4y agoHush, April Ludgate might hear you!
- t344344 4y agoIt would be great to have a commit history, bugzilla and content of database.
- danpalmer 4y agoI'm interested what the format of this will be (if it ever happens). There's never just "an algorithm", there might be a model, there might be a bunch of feature extraction code, there might be a server that runs it all, but none of these would be that useful in isolation, it's likely that all would be needed to be able to get an accurate idea of the behaviour of the system. But, as Musk says – no one really understands it all, so even then is that really useful? What may be more useful is releasing a set of policies, or product decisions about recommendations. Not necessarily code that implements them, but the ideas and values of the system and the people building it. The code would likely only be an approximation of that, but the policies/decisions are really the part most people can or will engage with.
- vishal0123 4y agoJust because you can't run it doesn't mean it wouldn't be useful. This likely will give insight on the kind of modelling, experiments, goal function, deployment methods, resiliency etc. And you could easily reverse engineer policy decision with code(IMO), but other way is not possible.
- danpalmer 4y agoI'm definitely not expecting something runnable. I think reverse engineering the policy from the code will be hard – this is why no one really understands these systems in full. However I think given the policy, assuming we trust that Twitter does in fact attempt to implement that policy, the code doesn't really matter. We wouldn't be able to run the code anyway, and bugs aren't really a problem compared to what the intention is, as Twitter would supposedly be constantly working to make the code match the policy.
- Sebguer 4y agoAh, yes, Elon promising a deadline for a release. Those always hit on target. Even better that there's absolutely no indication of what this will actually look like.
- misssocrates 4y agoOver optimistic estimates is how you know he's a real engineer.
- themitigating 4y agoOr an idiot
- LanceJones 4y ago[flagged]
- themitigating 4y agoBecause he's an idiot
- dumbotron 4y agoProps for getting both 3 and 4 word digs in.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dang 4y agoPlease don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments, regardless of how you feel about someone. We ban accounts that abuse HN this way. Perhaps you don't feel you owe that person better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- laverya 4y agoI really hope this slips a day and releases April 1st instead.
- totalhack 4y agoTranslation: we can't figure out a good way to do this. Let's get community feedback/help.
- nonethewiser 4y agoThis is something he said he'd do before buying Twitter.
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- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- muglug 4y agoThis is such a weird thing to do. Are they going to take pull requests? Or will they just publish a read-only code dump? Will they include Git history? If not, how will anyone hope to understand the code that Twitter engineers themselves apparently don’t understand? Also are they publishing the spam detection algorithms? That’s implicitly part of the recommendation system, but I bet it’s a separate service.
- eh9 4y agoBold of you to assume they’ve paid their GitHub bill
- operator-name 4y ago> People will discover many silly things , but we’ll patch issues as soon as they’re found! Like maybe? I'm sure it'll get a lot of eyes, so I guess they're hoping for some free labour?
- seydor 4y agoi m sure it's de rigueur to diss Musk, but this is smart for business. Twitter's recommendations arent that great and i doubt they re such a big driver of traffic (i use the chronological mode and it s not much different). The EU will now have to eat its paper, cause they are trying to pass laws about this, and the EU has solely called Musk to testify in the parliament. If true, this pulls the rug under a lot of very opinionated people
- rvnx 4y agoSmart ? Isn't it a risk that Twitter (the company) gets litigated because it has done illegal or unfair things in the past ? If some politics discover that Twitter has influenced in one way, they may be able to sue for example. Or if there were illegal discriminations. Also it makes it much easier for scammers to game the algorithm. The smart move would be to do nothing, as nobody has ever asked for Twitter's ranking algorithms.
- seydor 4y agoI doubt they will release that stuff. probably just some core sorting routines > as nobody has ever asked for Twitter's ranking algorithms. Actually many many people have. And this is good PR for his marketing department
- Invictus0 4y agoElon also said he would resign as CEO
- elif 4y agoHe also said it would probably take about a year to find someone with the right stuff..
- Invictus0 4y agoHe also said full self driving was a year away about 10 years ago
- elif 4y agoThe quote you are referencing is in the comment section, and he said there would be vehicles competing 90% of some journeys. That was accurate. His most inaccurate estimate was in 2020 that they could be a million robotaxis on the road in a year. That was off by a factor of 75% or so, as there were only about 200K beta testers in 2021. Today that figure is about 450K. FSD10 is good enough to drive 98% of journeys and 11 looks closer to 99%. Tesla is more cautious about removing humans because the scale and theater of operation is drastically different from the waymo/ford taxis which have no path to full self driving (as they cannot operate on the full roadway system) and because they are consumer products instead of their own internal tooling (complete with remote monitoring and control capability).
- Timon3 4y agoIf we're going by inaccurate estimates in 2020, how about this one? > “I think we will be ‘feature-complete’ on full self-driving this year, meaning the car will be able to find you in a parking lot, pick you up, take you all the way to your destination without an intervention this year,” Musk said during a podcast interview with the money management firm ARK Invest, which is a Tesla investor. “I am certain of that. That is not a question mark.” https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-tesla-full-self-driving-2019-2020-promise/ https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-tesla-full-self-drivin...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- layer8 4y ago> Our “algorithm” is overly complex & not fully understood internally. People will discover many silly things , but we’ll patch issues as soon as they’re found! […] Providing code transparency will be incredibly embarrassing at first, but it should lead to rapid improvement in recommendation quality. Sounds like Elon wants to crowdsource the analysis work.
- igornadj 4y agoElon has said he will open source the algorithm since even before the purchase. He said it is for transparency. Social media algorithms have done a lot of harm, covered and discussed endlessly on HN, and transparency would be a first step to reducing that harm. I believe the move is in line with his original motivation.
- WinstonSmith84 4y agoAfter having fired many of the devs, and the remaining ones not figuring out what all this is about, this looks like a desperate (or smart?) move to fix things while not spending a cent...
- inglor_cz 4y agoThe interesting question is: can it work? Unlike with the software itself, there was never a serious attempt to open-source such algorithms in the big social media space. Obscurity was the undisputed king. I would be glad if this attempt actually worked out. Sunlight is said to be the best disinfectant. But there will be a lot of bad actors trying to nudge the resulting algorithm somewhere in a subtle way. I wonder if all of them can be detected.
- Kye 4y agoThere don't seem to be many examples of a once-proprietary tool improving after going open source. Blender is the one that comes to mind, but that's driven by a dedicated user base full of working professionals looking to get away from expensive proprietary 3D suites. Anyone who can really understand this algorithm is highly incentivized to use it to their advantage rather than improve it.
- wise_young_man 4y agoTesla FSD is also coming any day now too.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nonethewiser 4y agoThis is good news. Give credit where it's due.
- jeromegv 4y agoYou give credit when it’s done. Not on announcements. He already promised it “next week” a while ago.
- klyrs 4y agoDuke Nukem Forever was good news until it actually shipped
- throwmeaway1212 4y agoShouldn't you wait to give credit until it actually happens? Elon has proved many times that what he says and what ends up happening is very different.
- LanceJones 4y agoI still get a laugh from all those people who insisted Twitter wouldn't last days... let alone months without having some major outage. Wrong, all.
- x86x87 4y agoelon? Is that you? https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-down-thousands-users-downdetectorcom-2022-12-29/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-down-thousands-us... https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/06/tech/twitter-website-down/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/06/tech/twitter-website-down/ind...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- paxys 4y agoGoing to be a brand new entry at https://elonsbrokenpromises.com/ https://elonsbrokenpromises.com/
- rvz 4y agoWell that didn't age well... [0][1] [0] https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm [1] https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm-ml https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm-ml
- dumbotron 4y agoThe pedo guy incident opened a lot of doors because he has zero credibility, so he can say anything he wants, and it's ok because you can't believe anything he says.
- nailer 4y agoMost people regularly say things that they believe are true, but probably not proven. Yes, celebrities generally shouldn't do that. I don't follow how that means they have zero credibility.
- paxys 4y agoThat's literally what credibility means. You may be smart and influential but if you cry wolf one too many times people are going to start to take everything you say with a grain of salt. After a hundred such incidents involving Musk that's where his reputation is going.
- nailer 4y agoPersonally I think Elon was foolish for calling the cave guy a pedo. But things like missed deadlines I don’t really think affect his credibility. It’s technology, estimates are hard. Most of the supposed damage to Elon’s reputation is simply attacks by Twitter competitors. Think of the hoax a few weeks ago about people being forced to read his tweets.
- jd24 4y agowtf is froth zone? it can't even handle the traffic. just link to twitter https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1636835209587949570 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1636835209587949570
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y agoTweak New Twitters users everywhere (who do not see recommendations, ever): yawn.
- sschueller 4y agoIsn't that going to be a disaster? If I know exactly how the algorithm decides how the recommendations work I can program my bots to take advantage of the setup completely. I predict this will be a one time thing and any changes will no longer be made public.
- igornadj 4y agoMost likely anti-spam is a separate algorithm.
- kadoban 4y agoWill it include the parts designed to prop up Elon's fragile ego?
- nailer 4y agoDirect link: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1636835209587949570 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1636835209587949570 summoning dang.
- dang 4y agoThis looks like an announcement of an announcement, which isn't on topic for HN. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22announcement%20of%20an%20announcement%22 https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... On HN, there's no harm in waiting for the actual thing. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22no%20harm%20in%20waiting%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... One problem with threads like this is that, because the story itself contains so little information, the comments fill up with low-substance dross—and if the topic has anything sensational about it, often indignation too. The mind seems to resort to these things in the absence of anything chewy to discuss. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=mind%20amuse%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
- archwiki 4y agoAlthough I admit I have nowhere near the experience dang does in moderation, this policy just doesn't sit well with me. In this human existence of timelines of information consumption, the sooner we confront and address new information the better. Isn't one of the most dopamine-inducing fun parts of news to be the first one to know about it, and be known to others you share it with as being skilled at keeping up with it? "Low-substance dross" seems very subjective, but I kind of get the idea. I would call it "reddit-tier". I guess your moderation is what keeps us above that level of content quality, and I certainly don't have time to dig into the history of your reasoning here, so I will give you the benefit of the doubt.
- edmundsauto 4y ago> In this human existence of timelines of information consumption, the sooner we confront and address new information the better. Isn't one of the most dopamine-inducing fun parts of news to be the first one to know about it, and be known to others you share it with as being skilled at keeping up with it? My counter opinion - decreasing latency beyond a threshold is one of the most harmful things in humanity today. It makes it impossible to form opinions based on deep thought / Type 2 systems. Similarly, one of the best ways to feel good immediately are cocaine or heroin. Fast news is cocaine - feels good now, but harmful.
- jiggawatts 4y agoThis will do nothing for freedom of speech, but will greatly help spammers “optimise” their messages.