Ah, yes, it was education, and certainly not strong regulation of how cigarettes are produced, marketed, and sold. Educating the youth is why vaping and smoking is not cool anymore.
What "free speech" exactly? Do you think that such a thing actually exists on platforms controlled by giant corporations? This "free speech" is heavily regulated by opaque algorithms and very specific terms of service. It's "free" as long as it aligns with the company's values and business goals, and your opinions will only reach other people if the algorithm decides that promoting it would drive engagement.
There is definitely a risk of governments using this as an excuse to encroach upon civil liberties, as they've done in the past, but this is not a black or white issue. The reality is nuanced and passing regulation requires careful discussion and balancing. I'm sure we can agree that regulating Big Tobacco and Big Pharma was a good thing, and not some civil rights issue, so why is Big Tech different?
We can also work on educating people, as you suggest, but it can't be the only solution. Regulating greedy and predatory companies should be a part of it.
It's amusing that you would rather support a ban on screens in schools, than regulating companies that make using screens harmful in the first place. It's very reminiscent of the blanket "TVs are bad" argument from past decades.
It's ridiculous that you're getting downvoted, you're 100% right. Though it's not unexpected given the forum. Many people here are either directly employed by social media companies and Big Tech, or are inside that bubble. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
The parallels between social media and cigarettes are undeniable. Nicotine and chemicals in tobacco are addictive on their own, yet tobacco companies made cigarettes as addictive as they possibly could. They also advertised to children, and deceived the public with false advertising and disinformation for decades. They were prosecuted for all of this, which put a stop to it in first-world countries, at least. There are still countries with lax regulation where the tobacco industry is engaging in the same tactics they used decades ago, and business is booming. Cigarettes didn't go away. People can still smoke if they want, but it's much more strictly regulated, as it should be.
Nobody was against regulating Big Tobacco, as it was obviously doing more harm than good. And yet whenever regulating social media and Big Tech is brought up, it is a civil liberties and government overreach issue. Give me a break.
Just for the record, I am neither directly employed by social media, nor big tech, nor am inside that bubble. And I never have been. My salary includes precisely zero dollars linked social media in any way. But hey, don't let the facts stop you from spinning a good yarn, built on many fine cliches.
Social media sucks. I used to use it, and I do not use it now. And yet regulating it, off the back of a moral panic, is going to be significantly worse than not regulating it. The laws will overreach. This is a sensitive area where the government greatly benefits from overreach, and there's not enough public pushback to prevent it, on account of the moral panic whipped up by traditional media, who also stand to greatly benefit from overreach.
I am completely consistent in my beliefs on this. I was against all the anti-terrorism legislation too, being absolutely confident it would overreach - and I was completely correct, which brings me no satisfaction at all. Terrorism is obviously far more dangerous than all this 'teenagers seeing images online that harm their self-esteem' nonsense.
It's the traditional media that have a direct pecuniary interest in defeating social media, and no one questions their motives. I'm just some guy, but apparently I'm the ExxonMobil Chairman of Cigarettes and Opioids, just because I dare disagree with the narrative being peddled.
It's much easier to pretend like I'm some paid shill than accept that you're taking a huge gamble with your civil liberties when you push for social media laws. If I could somehow segment reality so you get to live in your restricted world, and I get to live in my free one, I would. But unfortunately I'm trapped in this world with you, and your pitchfork mentality consistently affects me, so I have to take on the utterly thankless task of convincing the mob to take a goddamn second to think about the obvious consequences of their own actions.
And then they don't listen. And then ten years later they come back with their tails between their legs, acknowledging I was right, but by then it's far too late to do anything about it. Deeply unsatisfying cycle.
Notice that I said "many people". I have no way of knowing what your affiliation or agenda is, or even if you're human. That doesn't change the fact that many people here are indeed biased in favor of Big Tech, and at the same time would never admit it. You may simply be a fervent social media user, or have your own reasons for being wrong. :)
Look, do you think that I somehow don't care about my civil liberties? That I wish to live in a nanny state where the government gets to control every facet of my life? Obviously not. But at the same time, it would be foolish to look at the current state of the world without coming to the conclusion that social media has played a significant role in creating it.
FWIW, I'm not opposed to social media in principle. I think it creates spaces where cacophony dominates which ironically does the exact opposite of "connecting people", so I wouldn't be a part of it even if it weren't controlled by giant corporations. But if someone else feels differently, it's their own choice and I respect it. The real problem is the weaponization of these platforms to corrupt democratic processes, spread disinformation, and serve as a playground for companies to conduct mass psychological experiments, and do all kinds of devious shit we're not privy to, which should make it very clear that this technology is doing much more harm than good.
Which brings me back to the core of my argument, and what GP brought up: the undeniable parallels between social media and cigarettes. Do you think that regulating Big Tobacco, Big Pharma, and other industries, was government overreach? Would you rather live in a world where cigarettes are marketed towards children, are pumped full of addicting chemicals (beyond some "safe" limit, whatever that is), and where the Zuckerbergs, Sacklers, and Johnsons of the world get to do what they want? That seems objectively much more harmful to society than whatever erosion of your "liberties" you think is taking place. Governments don't need some big excuse to erode your liberties; they'll do that behind your back regardless. This "free" world you think you live in is an illusion.
Besides, which civil liberties are you particularly defending in regards to social media? Your rights to publish and consume content on platforms controlled by giant corporations? These are not some "public squares", as its CEOs would lead you to believe. Your "free speech" on them is heavily regulated by opaque algorithms and very specific terms of service. There are plenty of other channels you can use to communicate with people without being exploited and manipulated, while enjoying actual freedoms, so why is social media so sacred?
Regulation is a double-edged sword that needs to be carefully balanced. I share your own concerns about government overreach. But it's foolish to have the viewpoint that social media, and Big Tech in general, shouldn't be regulated. This is not "off the back of a moral panic"—it's based on hard evidence of the harm it actually causes. Do these companies actually have to commit genocide before you agree that something has to be done? Which has effectively already happened if you consider Facebook's role in the Myanmar genocide.
Hey, that's a perfectly reasonable stance, and I can relate to it.
Apologies for working around it and putting the code out there against your wishes. If you check my post history, you can see how opposed I am to these new tools, and "vibe coding" specifically. In my defense, I really didn't want to spend a lot of time on this, and LLMs do a decent job at this type of mechanical conversion. And I really don't judge anyone for using them mindfully, as you've clearly done in this case. The code didn't read like slop to me, if it's any consolation. :)
Besides, this "closed source" criticism is really a non-issue in this case considering it's a browser extension with clear JS, which anyone can inspect if they were really interested.
No problem at all! I didn't mean to be accusatory. And I wouldn't say inspecting the plugin code is against my wishes at all, no, definitely keep that hacker spirit alive! And feel free to reload the gist.
I suppose that my point is more that creating a GitHub repo has some strings attached to it nowadays, is all.
I've found many developers having switched to non-github forges (e.g. forgejo/gitlab/sourcehut or what have you), but particularly self-hosted instances, to sort of opt-out of the culture around mpdern-day open source. My sense is the barrier of entry is a social signal that they'd like to opt out of being assigned community manager+tech support+moderator for anonymous users. typically there isn't a functional issue here, but I guess avoiding the town square is a good way to avoid having to interact with the town drunk/crank/large language model
To be fair, the .xpi is just a .zip file, and the JS isn't minimized.
I vibe-converted it to a userscript[1], but it doesn't work for me in qutebrowser because it depends on profile data fetched from `https://hn-trustspark.com/alltrust.json`, which seems to be periodically updated by the author, and qutebrowser has limited userscript support. :(
It could probably be worked around by fetching the data externally, but I don't want to depend on hn-trustspark.com. It would be great if the profile updating tool could be published as well.
Anyway, hope it helps someone else :)
FWIW, after a quick review of the script, it looks safe to me. As long as you trust that the served profile data is correct, and don't mind leaking your IP to it.
Great idea and kudos to the author! We need more tools like this to help us deal with spam, and not just on HN, but everywhere.
Thanks! Nice, you found the alltrust.json file ha. Yes, a bg job running on an rpi leverages HN APIs and builds the alltrust file by the minute, for all "active" accounts. Technically fetching that data is all you'd need to make your own script/plugin.
It's centralized for a few reasons though, first being that client-side API requests would be discourteous to the APIs (flood/ddos), and a whole new level of error handling would be required. Shared IPs, like those in a tech company building, would easily and quickly reach the API limits. So that's the reasoning, if you're curious.
It's a good idea, provided nothing sketchy goes on either now or in a future update ... I'm playing about with it but will likely unload it soon enough.
One issue: New accounts with Zero submissions get a full green stack for "Submission Trust" (0 submissions in 0 days).
That comes across as three flat red lines and a singl tall green stack - not sure if that's the right message.
Submissions is an odd one ... those people that submit a story seen on the tech blogs once a day get bucketed together with habitual spammers of poor quality posts.
I agree that it was a tragedy, but the cultural and religious tensions have existed in the Balkans for centuries. Tito's strong leadership, charisma, "bratstvo i jedinstvo", etc., managed to keep it together, often by sheer force that suppressed nationalism. After he died, all it took for it to fall apart was a group of small-minded political pawns that filled the vacuum and infected the masses with their narrative, along with external influence from all sides that wanted their own piece of the pie.
Today each country might not be as relevant as Yugoslavia once was, but there's relative peace in the region, and the countries that are part of the EU today are significantly better off in many ways than they were before. It's a miracle that the Yugoslav experiment lasted as long as it did, so perhaps we should accept that the only way southern slavs can coexist is in independent states.
I think you're underestimating the significance of Yugoslavia in its heyday (~1960-1980).
It was a major political power not just in the region, but globally. Tito led and co-founded the Non-Aligned Movement, and effectively maintained sovereignty during the peak of the Cold War. It had a unique liberal flavor of socialism, where people enjoyed high standards of living, intellectual and cultural freedoms, freedom of movement (the Yugoslav passport was accepted globally), housing as a social right, decent wages, universal healthcare, etc. People were generally very happy. This is a big reason why "Yugonostalgia" still persists today.
Yes, the regime could be considered a dictatorship, with a strong police presence, and there are documented human rights violations, but it was far from an oppressive country.
Slovenia and Croatia were indeed wealthier than other regions, but the fiscal burden you mention is part of the socialist system that ensures a respectable standard of living for everyone. This doesn't work if there's a large wealth disparity between regions.
Yugoslavia was an interesting country with a unique political and social model which was not perfect, but IMO had less faults than the systems we have today. I think it's shortsighted to say that it would have the relevance of Bulgaria and Romania today.
> Yes, the regime could be considered a dictatorship, with a strong police presence, and there are documented human rights violations, but it was far from an oppressive countr
I can bet a half case of Guinness what if you describe that to a modern American sans the mention of the country most whould confirm what this is what happening now.
Modern "skills" and Markdown formats of the day are no different than "save the kittens". All of these practices are promoted by influencers and adopted based on wishful thinking and anecdata.
Uh, this couldn't be more false. I've implemented these from scratch at my company and rolled them out org-wide and I've yet to watch a youtube video and don't consume any influencers. Mostly by just using the tools and reading documentation - as any other technical tool.
Perhaps your blanket statement could be wrong, and I would encourage you to let your mind be a bit more open. The landscape here is not what it was 6 months ago. This is an undeniable fact that people are going to have to come to terms with pretty soon. I did not want to be in this spot, I was forced to out of necessity, because the stuff does work.
To be fair, if you have never watched a YouTube video in your life then how can you say the OP was wrong about what influencers are peddling? Side note, have you ever seen that Onion article on the man that can't stop telling people he doesn't own a TV?
Great, so how do you know this stuff works? Did you evaluate it against other approaches? How do you know it's actually reliable?
The Vercel team had some interesting findings[1]:
> In 56% of eval cases, the skill was never invoked. The agent had access to the documentation but didn't use it.
Others had different findings for commonly accepted practices[2], some you may have adopted from reading documentation, which surely didn't come from influencers.
And yet others swear by magical Markdown documents[3].
So... who is the ultimate authority on what actually works, and who is just cargo culting the trendy practice of the week? And how is any of this different from what was being done a few years ago?
Sorry, but from your first comment, I don’t particularly feel inclined to help you figure this out. I was just offering I’ve already deployed these things at a scale with success using many of the configuration options offered as documentation in the op here. this stuff isn’t some mystical blackbox, although you seem to think it is.
I measure the tooling success with a suite of small prompt tests performing repeatable tasks, measuring the success rate over time, educating the broader team, and providing my own tried and tested in the field skills that I’ve shared to similar successes to the broader teams. We’ve seen a huge increase in velocity and lower bug rate, which are also very easily measurable (and long evaluated stats) enough to put me in the position I am, which was not a reluctant one. You’re perfectly free to view my long history on this topic on this forum to see I am a complete skeptic on this topic, and wouldn’t be here unless I had to.
everyone is figuring this out still. There is no authority, I am my own authority on what I have seen work and what hasn’t. Feel free to take of that what you will. I just wanted to provide a counterpoint to your initial claim. I’m certainly not going to expose to a fine degree what has worked for my org and what hasn’t due to obvious reasons.
I kind of miss the age of freeware and shareware. It was often created by passionate individuals who put in a lot of care into the end product, which made it a joy to use. Once you paid for the software, you not only got the full version, but you felt good supporting someone who genuinely deserves it. There are still some examples of this, perhaps more so in the Apple ecosystem where proprietary/commercial software is the norm, but high quality software worth paying for is still rare.
Nowadays most software on Linux is open source, which is great, but the average quality is low, a lot of it is produced with little care and effort, it's quickly abandoned, and now in the age of "AI", even more so.
There's something so appealing about those fvwm window borders, aliased font, crisp graphics, and the simple and intuitive UI of xv. There's nothing jumping at you to get your attention, no ambiguous UI elements and dark patterns, just a well designed and functional GUI. We truly lost something along the way, as modern GUIs are rarely this user friendly.
Wouldn't you love to see that rendered with antialiasing at Retina resolution, but the same on-screen real size as it was back on a 17" 800x600 monitor? I bet it would look delightful.
Ah, yes, it was education, and certainly not strong regulation of how cigarettes are produced, marketed, and sold. Educating the youth is why vaping and smoking is not cool anymore.
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