skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think it would be great and I pretty much long for it. It's so obvious that even if it may be an overreach, there is such malpractice going on from all major social media players.

Youtube: Censors youtubers, documented in so many cases. It also gives "authoritarian news" a heavier weight in the algorithm. Removes comments with "communist bandits" in Chinese.

Twitter: Seriously bans people if they say the wrong pronoun

Reddit: A few people controls the majority of big subreddits, bans people with conservative views outright. Bans people that upvote stuff that they don't like. The have removed, banned hundreds of subreddits and users in the last few months. While they have chinese owners.

Facebook: Surprisingly the best of the bunch when it comes to serving every viewpoint imo. But they have had huge privacy implications just so many times.

But even so, I am very torn on the subject. The best thing would probably to force these companies not to censor/ban/remove people based on opinions. But the best thing for the world would most likely for these social media sites to not exist in the first place.

Personally I think social media sucks but I think most people are not ready to live without it either.
> If we could give a status that nothing on social media is too be taken seriously

The subject at hand are public statements from the president of the United States. How exactly does one not "take that seriously"? Given the gravity of the situation: if it's wrong, and you know it's wrong, surely you have a responsibility to tell people it's wrong. Right?

> Ask some oracle what "fact" is and shun every other point of view?

How is Trump being "shunned" here? Twitter put a correction link at the bottom of his tweet.
This is only a problem if you believe the public education system isn't doing its job to create thoughtful, educated people with an understanding of the world around them.
> essentially create a public(1) forum where I am not able to exercise my first amendment rights(2) (and, legally speaking, rightfully so(3)). I cannot help but to find this very concerning.

(1) Private forum, displayed in the public.
(2) Those rights protect your speech from being suppressed BY THE GOVERNMENT.
(3) Correct if you meant legally as a private company running a private forum, they can manage the content as they see fit, including fact checking the POTUS. Or incorrect if you meant you have a legal right to exercise your speech on their platform free of their rules.
our two party system is a national disgrace.
Not really.

Homeopathy assumes that which causes likewise symptoms to be a candidate for cure, while here it is the idea of microdosing the disease, which hopefully would not case symptoms like the full blown disease, and the second tenant of homeopathy, the dilutions increase potency, would also hopefully be absent as that would be like the viral load factor, but in reverse.
There are already some novel applications of this. It is extremely useful to use Google's screening service for unknown numbers that might be a call I'm expecting from a new number. I can't recall the last time I actually listened to a voicemail. I know that at least voicemail transcription works elsewhere, and I can't speak to how well, but I do know that on the Pixel, transcription is really quite impressively accurate.

I'm sure it's not much different than the test shown in the twitter post, but I've enjoyed calling myself from another phone and then screening the call and doing my best micro machines guy fast-talking impression just to see how well it really can transcribe conversation at real-time speeds.
A day in a Train Factory Circa 1905
A quick read, describing the roughly 10,000 workers who built train engines at the Baldwin Locomotive Works, which was spread over twelve city blocks in Philadelphia. They put out seven engines a day (!), and for modern development, it would be interesting to get more on their process.
End-to-End Object Detection with Transformers
https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/26/18759967/reddit-quarantin...

> Media Matters for America pointed out posts where r/The_Donald members fantasized about or encouraged violence related to Oregon’s recent climate change vote where Republican lawmakers fled the state Senate to prevent a climate change bill from passing, one of them even implying that he would respond to any police action with violence. r/The_Donald members posted comments like “none of this gets fixed without people picking up rifles” and “[I have] no problems shooting a cop trying to strip rights from Citizens.” The posts were later removed.

Various other bits of misbehavior ensued: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/The_Donald#Quarantine,_restr...

> In November 2019, the subreddit's moderators attempted to evade Reddit's imposed quarantine by reviving and promoting a subreddit called r/Mr_Trump. This subreddit was banned by Reddit's administrators in accordance with its policy that "attempting to evade bans or other restrictions imposed on communities is not allowed on Reddit." Days later, Reddit's admins warned the subreddit's moderators about trying to out the alleged White House whistleblower in the Trump–Ukraine scandal in violation of Reddit's rules on harassment and inviting vigilantism.

and Reddit bans the left-wing equivalents for similar actions: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/us/politics/bernie-sander...

> Over the summer, the “Chapo Trap House” message board, which has nearly 153,000 members who chat about the news and memes of the day, was censured by Reddit, which hosts it. The page now has limited reach and is in a sort of digital purgatory, where it remains.
I have been wondering how one would teach enough evolutionary psychology and neuroscience to children to make them less susceptible to memetic engineering. Now that we have gone from human marketers to automated systems working to influence purchases and votes, traditional media criticism seems insufficient.
They ARE free to say whatever they like; their problem is that they then have to face the consequences.

I mean I can say whatever I want on this platform as well, but if I cross a line my posts will be hidden and eventually my account blocked. And that is fair, it's what I agreed to, and not only that but it's morally just.

The free speech extremists confuse freedom of speech with protection from consequences.

Interestingly, Trump and some other celebrities on Twitter have had special protection from said consequences.
It’s surprising only if you take them at face value. I don’t and I’m never surprised, it’s all quite predictable actually.
Show HN: GraphQL2REST – Automatically generate a REST API from your GraphQL API
Although vaccines aren't the same thing as variolation, and were developed because of the inherent risks of microdosing a dangerous pathogen. They are called "vaccines" because of the use of cowpox (a virus related to but much less dangerous than smallpox) in Jenner's vaccine and cow is "vacca" in Latin (similar to modern Spanish vaca).
We have enough forums that allow or encourage political discussions and then inevitably devolve into hyper-partisan shitshows (Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc.). It's nice to have a refuge that's mostly free from this dynamic.
France bans hydroxychloroquine for Covid19 treatment
Thank you. I wonder what's really going on here.
Video shows blackman ‘murdered’ by police in Minneapolis didn’t resist arrest
I actually don’t mind if this happens. Just close social media already.
> Private organization that enjoys the legal protections of a platform. Reclassify them as a publisher. Can't have it both ways.

You absolutely can, and that's even been a norm in the US since CDA Section 230 was implemented specifically to make that possible, within certain bounds, which Twitter sits well within.

Admittedly, that's been progressively chipped away recently.
I have trouble believing that Linux's demise is remotely possible at this point. Too many huge tech companies have made their beds with it for Microsoft to be able to change that.

Linux desktop has the opposite problem: it's always been niche for mainstream users because its app ecosystem has never been good enough and it's often finicky to set up, even if its support for developers has been great.
Why wouldn't it? Proven good formula and a hole in the market. A dozen clones would spring up immediately.
Trump didn't start that "conversation". "Fake News" was a term originally intended to reflect the false "news-like" advertisements that were being purchased on social media (primarily Facebook, and primarily targetting conservative users). Trump appropriated it as a way to label unflattering news coverage from mainstream sources.
That's such a stupid comic. The 1st Amendment doesn't give you a right to free speech, it says they won't take away your right.
Because the alternatives are also bad in a bunch of ways and people still prefer these problems to those problems. Let's not pretend like other hardware vendors and operating systems are magical fairy realms of candy and rainbows where nothing goes wrong, everything makes sense, and everyone is happy all the time.
Who cares? This is about ethics, not laws. If you are a proponent of this argument you would just advocate for changing the law
Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2020
I wonder if it's being A/B tested. I still see the URL, and can click on it from the little "i" icon at the top left. Android, Chrome, USA.

Surely a terrible idea though. AMP already has a PR problem.
You are using facts. This is not very effective (against antivaxers and homeopathy enthusiasts).
Well, I'm so fed up with feeling a failure after all that effort that I'm kicking my past young self in the arse for not joining the merchant-navy when I could (too old for that now too). So - no it's not going overly well(1). Yet I have had 5 jobs up to now in IT and I got them all without any network push so that probably has given me a warped view of how things actually work.

(1) I have a job atm. It's mostly the prospects that fear me out.
Thiel seems to want to use Trump to break the US system of government because he thinks that’s the only way to move forward. He’s disrupting.
https://nutrition.bmj.com/content/early/2020/05/15/bmjnph-20...

"There is no strong scientific evidence to show that very high intakes (ie, mega supplements) of vitamin D will be beneficial in preventing or treating COVID-19."
> Ask some oracle what "fact" is and shun every other point of view

Because the 'correct answer' to many questions is 'it depends...'. You enumerate the advantages and disadvantages of various options and pick an option that satisfies some sort of evaluation function (which may depend on your point of view). Some of the advantages and disadvantages are facts while others are probabilities.

This of course doesn't work well in short form media or for people who like things simple.
I posted a few random comments to the_donald right after the election and it took years before I didn’t have a good chance of getting a really nasty message about how I was a Nazi when leaving comments anywhere else.
You can't "get rid of free version".

When you choose this wording or stuff like "someone is worried" then it's a plain FUD.
A very long winded way to write “racists”
Anyone else from Japan having a hard time finding the supposed prostitute thing Itoi said?
I can't find any Japanese sources.
I once got a strike on social media for posting an article about a German doctor that recommended whiskey to cure covid19. It was a joke, and any reasonable adult would know this is false.

It's hard for me to feel sorry for companies that go down the fact checking route with algorithms; It always ends up causing more damage than value.

12 years ago we didn't have this problem, and I think that's mostly related to the fact there was some UX resistance to hitting the "reahare" button.
I've got a brand-new 2019 16" and am dealing with the widespread crashes on wake from sleep. Honestly, it's a harder decision to send it back than you might think, for several reasons:

1) The hardware quality of other OEMs is bad too. Lenovo has really gone downhill. I sold my maxed-out X1 Carbon 7th Gen, which in less than a year: a) came with an LTE card that never worked for more than an hour at a time; b) had the display bezel start peeling off (it's a sticker!); c) developed a bunch of dead pixels; d) started randomly locking up; e) had weird issues with power usage, where some service related to the touchpad would go crazy and start using all the CPU.

2) Other laptop makers make design choices and trade-offs that I find unacceptable. For me, the 16" MBP is the perfect balance of power, weight, and battery life. It compromises by using a 3K screen instead of a 4K screen, and gets 11+ hours of light usage. Alternatives like the XPS 15 or Lenovo X1 Extreme force you to choose between an FHD panel and good battery life, or a 4K panel and substantially shorter battery life. The Surface Laptop 15" uses a 15W ultra-mobile processor in a machine that runs $2,800 when configured with 32GB of RAM, and has a battery half the size of the one in the MBP 16". Many 15" laptop vendors include a numeric keypad, which is a deal-breaker for me because it forces you to type at an angle to keep your hands centered in front of you when in the home position.

3) Touchpad and high-DPI scaling.
These aren't to me the clearest Wikipedia pages, but I think I now understand that - in modern usage, ignoring origins - vaccination and inoculation are both types of immunisation; the latter using a sample of the thing to immunise against, while a vaccine is actually strictly speaking immunisation through other means, some other substance to the thing that should be immunised against?

I suppose I thought they were synonyms, but I certainly thought a vaccine was 'a bit of' the thing to immunised against, despite remembering Jenner and his cow.
If Trump stops lying he won't have a problem.
In this instance is he really against free speech though? Seems like the struggle seems to be between his freedom of speech and twitter's. It all comes down to the question of whether twitter is a "publisher" with the freedom to edit/change content users post on its site. Seems like they want to be treated as both when its convenient for them.
> i think this approach will be like Nuclear Fusion, always 20 years away

Oh man that sucks going to take that long. It does seem like the "ultimate thing" regarding stem cells. Neuralink itself sounds "too convenient"/makes it seem easy, not sure about accuracy... will see. Still seems like trying to thread a needle with a mallet sort of thing.
>So the question remains - do you, or how do you lessen the spread of misinformation?

The easiest is to get rid of bots and control who can tweet. Anyone can create an account but to tweet you need to prove your identity. Bots are the real issue. Trump lying on social media is a problem but it's not fundamentally dissimilar to him lying on TV or at a campaign rally. He is a liar and whatever platform he is on he will use it to lie. The problem is all the bots masquerading as humans making people think and believe that the lies are mainstream facts.
Every single airline is offering no change fees for a long time. Ok maybe there are are some airlines that don't (Spirit? Wizz Air? I don't actually know, just assuming.) So they'll be able to take their trip later.
Re. the part about reading for pleasure: I do this too and used to think it was a bad habit. But, actually, after years of re-reading particular favourites multiple times, I uncover something knew that clicks more of the story into place. It’s a delightful experience that increases the re-readability of your favourite works :)
Or the guns rights activists barely flinching at "Take the guns first, go through due process second". Just trying to imagine their reaction if the previous officeholder had said that.

The anger at the kneeling protestors is especially revealing considering the debate centered around whether the private NFL could interfere with the expression of the players.
I suppose I disagree about what is "fundamental".

On some level I can see how HEP and quantum mechanics are "fundamental" in that they describe the "building blocks" of the universe.

But these branches of physics really only describe matter at very small scales. In terms of being actually useful to understand the vast majority of physical situations encounted in practice, HEP and quantum physics are mostly useless. "Classical" physics is more "fundamental" in the sense that it is more useful in a wider variety of contexts.

Or at least this is my view, as a fluid dynamicist. Turbulence is far more important than HEP, but unfortunately it receives far less media attention and far less attention from the brightest people. (I think turbulence has HEP beat in funding, though. :-)
They really aren’t for personal freedom. That group is basically hoping he stays on as a dictator because they believe he is the only one who can save the nation. I wish I was kidding.
It would hilarious to see the first cases of PTSD in AI.
4 year degrees in AI already exist.

Here is Edinburgh: https://www.ed.ac.uk/studying/undergraduate/2020/degrees/ind...

Here is CMU: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/bs-in-artificial-intelligence

I think the above degrees are more balanced than OP's proposal. More emphasis on foundations, and courses on ethics. Operating systems and compilers are useful if you go into AI engineering but are a diversion from core AI topics.
For those missing the context, Twitter didn’t actually remove or censor anything; they added a small call-out next to a politically motivated tweet.

Trump responded in an aggressive manner that can be perceived as threatening. That’s one discussion, and one I’m not currently capable of engaging in rationally.

The other discussion is whether Twitter did right in this case. Rather than tell Twitter they’re out of place, I actually think they did the right thing, provided they’re willing to do it _more_, to shift towards having this performed by a group with some transparency around it, and to reference sources when they do so.

Seeing politicians I can’t stand called out in public for lying is deeply satisfying, but won’t change my mind about anything. I’d be interested in seeing what happens when fact checks on all politicians are considered expected & there’s a purported neutral party doing so. Can that be done without the process itself being eaten alive by political agendas? Would I personally be open to fact checks on politicians that I myself favor, and would it change my perspective on them? It feels worth trying to find out.

Ultimately, even if we end up deciding that an approach is unworkable, I applaud anyone willing to at least try to clean up our discourse right now. It’s ugly enough to have created a divide that will eventually threaten violence at scale if not addressed.

Edit: curious why the downvotes; this was deliberately civil.
It’s a bit more complex than that, in my experience. This is a contrived example, but if someone has 20 years of experience, it’s unlikely that they’ll be willing to accept a job offer appropriate for someone with 5 years of industry experience, even if the interview reveals they have that level of proficiency.
When private organizations are regulating the speech of the population? It's a necessary slope.

Because doing it without centralized government control is bad. But regulation of speech can be good. Take a look at https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1189120.shtml for an interesting discussion.
Good point. I respect the right of people to have a safe space. I hope HN can continue to be one.

These are interesting times we live in, with a President leveraging modern communications technology in a way that hasn't really been seen since the fireside chat era of the Roosevelt administration.
i have seen oracle heavily employing RLS for authorization in e-business suite. and it made things so much easier.
Twitter will kowtow to the President here. He is the reason alone Twitter survived the last 6 years and they have shown publicly that politicians and celebrities play by different rules on their platform.
Nitter link (for anyone who doesn't like opening Twitter links):
https://nitter.net/realDonaldTrump/status/126560161131073945...
Forget about the free speech albatross. To me, what Twitter is doing looks like a clear case of election interference. They are basically giving free ads to the opposition of Trump. He tweets something, they annotate it with a link to media sources that are heavily biased toward the democrats.

Will they be giving the same treatment to @joebiden? He has been known to lie and plagiarize throughout his political career.

Who qualifies as a reliable source for fact checking? I see links to sources like CBS and CNN, neither of which are known as bastions of truth, and both of which have failed many fact checks themselves, in recent memory.
Besides the economic slowdown I suspect some of this is also the Model Y is eating into sales of the other 3 and this price adjustment is mostly to differentiate them a bit more.
Agreed. Pretty much asking for an intervention. Practically begging for a crackdown. Larger plan?
Can confirm a similar situtation for the "Briefwahl" in Germany. The topic came up while discussing the security of electronic voting years ago. It was sobering.
Isn't that exactly what Twitter did?

They left the speech up, and added a note below it expressing their opinion that a particular link demonstrates that the tweet was not factual.
You shouldn't become an angel investor
Get rid of section 230
And this is the government that the HN crowd is screaming to “regulate tech”?
As a straw man for discussion; I'm not too familiar with what Twitter is doing, but in an ideal world I think the solution would look something like what Twitter sounds like. Notably, posts containing objectively false information would be flagged, but not necessarily censored.

With that straw man though, it's fairly easy to poke holes. How do we ever even implement that? Even if we ignore the sheer volume of posts, a single post is often difficult to fact check. The lie can be subtle, but even worse is the human language and how much room there can be for misdirection, dishonesty, etc.

In my spare time I work on a project (not even close to release lol) with the goal of easing information sharing, retention, etc - as I figure part of the problem to the current age is a lack of information. Wikipedia is great, but it's quite large form discussion and I think we need better tools to help us document our own conclusions. BUT, even in all the effort I've put towards this tool I haven't dreamed of quantifying the truthiness.

I just don't see how we're going to cope with these sort of truth problems. It concerns me. It feels like information is a tool of war these days, and I am concerned we're losing.
I'd say both of those things are frequently true, and it's hard to know which is right when. "Fans" in aggregate also have the benefit of hindsight and confirmation bias. For every smart fan who was right, there were many who were wrong but don't keep bringing it up years later. Coaches OTOH have to live with the decisions made in the moment, right or wrong.
The very same Reddit where criticism frequently gets you banned or censored in subreddits like /r/conservative ?

Just because the majority in a particular community disagrees with you doesn't make you censored or silenced.
Obligatory xkcd
https://xkcd.com/1357/
Definitely frustrating for anyone not on broadband. There are more of us than you'd think. It's a giant 'fuck you' from the software industry, real world efficiency be damned.
> If I want anything, it's algorithmic filtering: Take the feeds I'm already subscribed to, and filter out the stuff that I tend to skip over without reading. Because my blog feed already delivers me a couple hours' worth of reading a day, so I can afford to be choosy.

I think that Newsblur does this.
Wow a comment that isn't just calling trump a racist and is calmly laying out the facts....