Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23661036

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

I just use GnuCash, a scanner, some good old Samba file-hosting on a local Debian server running 24/7, and WOL and VNC (or just SSH and SCP) if I need to access anything from not at home.

I tried quitting Facebook, WhatsApp, and whatnot, to no avail. It just doesn't work out like that for me.

I'm born to expatriate parents in some country my Dad was working at the time. Half of my relatives presently live more than 10,000 km away from me, the other half are spread about in all of Germany. I was at two international schools, and a local German school. From the former, my friends are spread out all over the world. From the latter, all around Germany, and some around the world. I presently live and work here in Germany, but I'm sure, if I ever leave for another country, that something like Facebook will become even less expendable. I'm grateful for social media, but I am indeed annoyed that Facebook's the one that has prevailed (so far).

My best friends are the ones I text and call and hang out with. The others, who don't get that privilege, we're both glad to be able to see what the other is doing, without having to engage in direct contact. It doesn't make that form of communication less valuable, because in fact, it adds another dimension to it, increasing the total (social) value.

If all your friends are like Elliot Alderson, sure, I bet you don't need Facebook or any social media. But I also have a ton of friends and relatives who I'd honestly describe as "IT-handicapped", that wouldn't be able to make a change away from Facebook. And these people for one do not understand why Facebook is so bad, and are also too numerous to "convert" away from it, and second, I also don't want to be the "Messiah" to do that.

It thus makes more sense to "convert" Facebook. It may be a privately owned company, but if not already, the data we leave there belongs to us (maybe not in the US, but the EU appears to be trying to head into that direction) and so we should also have a say in that.

And, most of all, I want interoperability.

I believe if it were still possible to keep in touch with Facebook friends and content without being a Facebook-user yourself, we can subvert the Network Effect, which in the first place is what Facebook owes its dominance to.

A solution may be to force social media companies by law to adhere to a standard on information exchange, much like e-mail and http protocols.

If there is such a thing as "OpenBook" and it still allows me to communicate, comment, view and react to FB-content, I'd ditch FB in an instant.

But I'm somewhat annoyed that "Most recent" doesn't actually sort the news feed chronologically, and also show everything. The algorithm is still doing something there.

Absolutely agree. Which is why I also agree with Zuckerberg's decision to let the post stand. I also believe it to be more important to teach people to assess a danger for themselves, instead of trying to protect everyone from danger.

> "And yes, you can have an independent moderator system - but they’ll end up in the same position as Facebook as well, with no accountability to the public."

In its present form, yes. But what if we force social media towards interoperability? As in, you can use Facebook, but you can befriend people from Mastodon and Twitter with it, too, because a law says that this all must be interoperable? In such a case, a neutral, independent, maybe state-enforced moderation would become possible.

To be fair, so has the monitor resolution and its density. I'm looking at HN, and imagine, ten years ago, I was using 1280x1024 then, this very font would've physically been a much bigger picture. So in effect, the font-size increase may only counter-measuring the resolution increase...

I coincidentally found this yesterday, and while it is on the topic of racism, you can just as much transpose races for classes, and still be on point: https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/02/colorblindness-adds-to-...

But where do you test the compiled software?

If I use an analogy from the Internet, it's like web developers using hugely uncompressed pictures, but nobody cares, because everyone's got broadband. But then, the guy with a mobile data rate wants to view the page. Or the poor sod, who for some reason is still stuck on 56k. And except for bloated pictures, I mean system services, tasks and processes, and no one realizes what a drag they may be causing, because everyone's got at least four cores nowadays, anyways. That's a very real danger for any developer, to "lose touch with reality" when it comes to their users.

Don't forget to keep in touch with reality, a bunch of people on this globe still have to get by using dual-cores.

Allow the benefit of doubt that a "software-based" system would only be implemented, if it were superior in such a way, that such a situation doesn't even occur in the first place. That is the benefit. It alleviates the necessity for the "human-wiggling-around-laws-that-actually-make-it-illegal-what-you're-doing,-but-those-laws-are-stupid,-so-whatever,-we-don't-care-about-that-specific-law".

It's most likely a very unknown concept for anyone presently, since it doesn't yet exist, but I believe, if human civilization works more on the aspect of creating a universal law that is language-agnostic, we would have a better solution than the ones we currently have.

Also, tax filings and the like are basically automated. It's just about expanding such automated concepts for more efficiency as well as removing the language-bias laws exhibit. I'm fully aware of the shortcomings of automation, and also do believe that a human "arbitrator", or judge, is required and preferred.

But in essence, my goal in stating my opinion was to plant the idea of language-agnostic law, for which maths, code and logic can form a solution. It's philosophical pondering towards a global government policy in a very long-run.

I'm serious.

Why let "government code" be subject to all the shortcomings and pitfalls of natural language when you could just use cold hard logic and exact math instead?

Natural language is just programming for humans, anyways.

If you have the information available, on what the mentioned threshold is, please do share.

For the less than 10 visits a day my blog receives, of which 98% are bots, I'm not going to do a deep dive into GDPR policies.

In Europe, law doesn't work like in the US in the way that it's to be taken literally, but in the way that the law was intended - which is not to discriminate amateur blogs, but to enforce data protection amongst the big players, i.e. Facebook, YouTube, etc...

Therefore, I still stand by my original claim: For an amateur blog, don't crack your head over GDPR.

EDIT: Provided, of course, you don't use the tools of the big players, e.g. Google Analytics.

Not sure where I read it, but it was in the range of something around 10,000 per day/week/month.

Definitely not something to crack your head over, if you just want to host a personal blog (unless you're a celebrity?).

SOURCE: I self-host a personal blog in Germany, and had read up on it a year or two ago.

...which would be? AFAIK, there aren't any comparable studies to date, which is why there was such a buzz about it.

All statements made in the paper are marked with "vorläufig", which translates to preliminary.

Considering the gravity of the situation, I don't think it's bad to provide preliminary results, but that's probably highly debatable.

Sometimes, reputation blocks science too, e.g. applied in reverse, the reputation-seeking prevents many false-hypothesis confirmations, because they're less likely to propel a career (or damage it).

EDIT: ...come to think of it, the scientific method is in itself reputation-agnostic.

EDIT2: ...imagine a world, where all science was public, open, but anonymized. No patents, no proprietary research. It's a dystopia for some, and possibly a utopia for others.