3 ms·

@dang How is this offtopic? Meta has shown remarkable disregard to users' and employees' privacy. Why should that not come up when discussing an entirely new

by fooker 4mo ago

@dang How is this offtopic? Meta has shown remarkable disregard to users' and employees' privacy. Why should that not come up when discussing an entirely new dystopian technology that allows them to invade privacy at scale?

dang 4mo ago
The topic is research into brain-wave decoding. To take some specific piece of research going on in one corner of $BigCorp, and tar it with the brush of general sentiment about $BigCorp, is a classic example of generic tangent: where the topic goes from something specific-and-more-interesting, to something generic-and-more-indignant. We've learned over the years that this is exactly the wrong direction for HN threads to head in. Note this, from https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."
- fooker 4mo ago
  It's not a 'general sentiment' or tangent though, it's specifically THE technology that has the potential to make privacy nonexistent. Funded by the company that in the recent past, got exposed trying to track employees computer interactions and grabbing screens. Not long before that, it was leaked that employees and contractors were watching videos recorded from meta/rayban smartglasses. I'm a little bit baffled by the defense here. The point of having guidelines is to use your judgement when applying them.
  - dang 4mo ago
    I brought up the "generic tangent" guideline because this was a case of how small/specific topics tend to get sucked into the gravity field of big/generic ones, leading to less interesting discussion (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20generic%20black%20hole&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). Not only that but less-interesting discussion is usually more-indignant, which makes sense when discussion abandons the actual content of an article (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...). So we end up losing along two axes: loss of information and rise of inflammation.

by fooker 4mo ago

dang 4mo ago

The topic is research into brain-wave decoding. To take some specific piece of research going on in one corner of $BigCorp, and tar it with the brush of general sentiment about $BigCorp, is a classic example of generic tangent: where the topic goes from something specific-and-more-interesting, to something generic-and-more-indignant. We've learned over the years that this is exactly the wrong direction for HN threads to head in. Note this, from https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."

fooker 4mo ago
It's not a 'general sentiment' or tangent though, it's specifically THE technology that has the potential to make privacy nonexistent. Funded by the company that in the recent past, got exposed trying to track employees computer interactions and grabbing screens. Not long before that, it was leaked that employees and contractors were watching videos recorded from meta/rayban smartglasses. I'm a little bit baffled by the defense here. The point of having guidelines is to use your judgement when applying them.
- dang 4mo ago
  I brought up the "generic tangent" guideline because this was a case of how small/specific topics tend to get sucked into the gravity field of big/generic ones, leading to less interesting discussion (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20generic%20black%20hole&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). Not only that but less-interesting discussion is usually more-indignant, which makes sense when discussion abandons the actual content of an article (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...). So we end up losing along two axes: loss of information and rise of inflammation.