Hacker News: amirmc

New comment by amirmc in "The Financial Times’ 404 page"

amirmc — Sun, 24 Oct 2021 20:17:24 +0000

I see. It seems that I was getting the empty page half an hour ago for just that link. Now it’s taking me to the full page.

New comment by amirmc in "The Financial Times’ 404 page"

amirmc — Sun, 24 Oct 2021 19:46:50 +0000

Interesting. That specific page is blank but others redirect to a more useful 404

https://www.ft.com/thispagedoesnotexist

Game ‘pre-bunks’ Covid-19 conspiracies

amirmc — Mon, 12 Oct 2020 23:40:47 +0000

Article URL: https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/goviral

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24760766

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by amirmc in "Treat Facebook like something between a telco and a newspaper, says Zuckerberg"

amirmc — Sat, 15 Feb 2020 23:51:48 +0000

Of course FB wants to control content. It helps them increase engagement and also monetise.

British Member of Parliament publishes 250 pages of damning Facebook documents

amirmc — Thu, 06 Dec 2018 12:42:51 +0000

Article URL: https://boingboing.net/2018/12/05/last-laugh-on-zuck.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18617510

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

BIOS (W17) raises $4.5M to further develop its neural interace

amirmc — Tue, 04 Dec 2018 19:14:24 +0000

Article URL: https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/04/bios-health/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18602722

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by amirmc in "Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information"

amirmc — Thu, 27 Sep 2018 08:28:03 +0000

‘Willingly’? I think unwittingly is more likely.

New comment by amirmc in "Traveling the World on a Third World Passport"

amirmc — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 10:41:55 +0000

I’d argue it’s not the same. It certainly gives you a very close and stark window into what it’s like, but it doesn’t compare to the lived experience.

New comment by amirmc in "The FDA is powerless to stop right-to-try profiteers"

amirmc — Thu, 21 Jun 2018 17:54:49 +0000

> Companies are hardly going to make tons of money on unapproved therapies anyway, because the word will get out if x patients tried it and had no benefits.

That seems wildly optimistic to me. Companies, especially pharma, will always find ways to 'make tons of money'. The second part of the sentence assumes a level of disclosure (from the companies) and rationality (on the part of average people), that I don't believe exists in the world. There are plenty of examples to back that up, especially people's willingness to believe self-serving 'facts'.

New comment by amirmc in "America’s Teens Are Choosing YouTube Over Facebook"

amirmc — Fri, 01 Jun 2018 09:13:06 +0000

IIRC WhatsApp also cared a lot about making the app available on all kinds of phones. Not just iOS/Android. So all those people in the rest of the world could start using it and bring their families on board.

New comment by amirmc in "Emissions of banned, ozone-depleting chemical CFC-11 have climbed 25% since 2012"

amirmc — Fri, 18 May 2018 13:40:08 +0000

> But I guess asking logical questions is frowned upon...

I did not consider the questions to be particularly ‘logical’ at all. Naive, perhaps, but not logical.

There’s presumably 30 years of knowledge you could look up to formulate better questions.

New comment by amirmc in "Emissions of banned, ozone-depleting chemical CFC-11 have climbed 25% since 2012"

amirmc — Thu, 17 May 2018 12:09:54 +0000

You seem to be trying to refute models of complicated atmospheric processes based on (necessarily) over-simplified high school physics.

I’m sure there much more reading material out there than just the two Wikipedia pages you linked. Try the following for some more: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion

New comment by amirmc in "Underestimating the mind-warping potential of fake video"

amirmc — Wed, 25 Apr 2018 12:10:29 +0000

> * The scientific method is such that Science is never wrong. It's god-esque.*

You've misunderstood my point. The scientific method is such that 'Science' is always wrong. It's a method to continually try to become less wrong about how the world works.

I don't even know what you're referring to when you capitalise 'science' the way you have been. It's not like there's a single entity called 'Science' that issues proclamations.

New comment by amirmc in "Underestimating the mind-warping potential of fake video"

amirmc — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 22:14:45 +0000

> However, Science makes no effort to own those mistakes.

That sounds ludicrous to me. The entirely of the scientific method is about generating hypotheses, testing them out, finding out you're wrong, and then refining/rewriting those hypotheses and trying again, ad infinitum. Plenty of scientists have been 'wrong' for years.

I'd argue the problem you're trying to highlight isn't about 'Science' per se, but the fact that people/the masses/etc like to have just one immutable 'answer' for something. They find it difficult to cope when new results point to different answers. Is that really the fault of 'Science'?

New comment by amirmc in "Underestimating the mind-warping potential of fake video"

amirmc — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 22:05:53 +0000

> Science is science reporting.

No, it is not. This is why I drew the distinction in the first place.

> Normal people can only understand what is reported.

Which backs up my point that sensationalised reporting is a problem. Peer-reviewed, scientific papers are written for other scientific researchers — that's as it should be.

New comment by amirmc in "Underestimating the mind-warping potential of fake video"

amirmc — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 16:54:20 +0000

> (e.g., consuming Y is safe only to find out it causes birth defects, cancer,etc.) Science blames the customer/consumer.

It feels like there's a conflation of science and science reporting in here somewhere. Most of the actual research output makes measured claims but the journalism around it ends up being sensationalised (yes, some researchers also participate in that but not as a rule).

New comment by amirmc in "Tesla Was Kicked Off Fatal Crash Probe by NTSB"

amirmc — Thu, 12 Apr 2018 16:13:39 +0000

Except that’s not what happened here. In this analogy, that engineer made public statements before the investigation was completed and then the investgating group told them to leave.

New comment by amirmc in "Instagram ranked worst social network for young people's mental health"

amirmc — Mon, 09 Apr 2018 17:46:44 +0000

> "Respondents were asked to score how each of the social media platforms they use impact upon issues such as anxiety, loneliness and community building. The site with the most positive rating was YouTube, followed by Twitter. Facebook and Snapchat came third and fourth respectively."

YouTube had the most positive rating!? I'm honestly not sure what to make of this. The experience of 14-24 year olds must be vastly different to the comments etc I've seen there.

New comment by amirmc in "Dunbar's Number"

amirmc — Mon, 09 Apr 2018 17:34:32 +0000

The section of the Wikipedia page probably needs updating. The very next section describes how they went from 50 people, to 150, then lifted the limits entirely.

> ...which might explain why there wasn't as much benefit from it as one might have hoped.

I think you've got this the wrong way around. The users probably didn't like being constrained to an arbitrary number. My main point was that any service that tries to impose such limits is going to feel pressure to raise/abolish them.

New comment by amirmc in "Dunbar's Number"

amirmc — Mon, 09 Apr 2018 13:09:30 +0000

I don't think this would work since users would protest and the limits would be eventually be lifted. I have friends who already purge their FB lists now and then, so people who want to do that already can.

Also, Path [1] was social network app that had these kinds of limits back in the day.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_(social_network)