One field I haven't seen anyone mention yet is cybersecurity. It's a huge problem, and one that could really use more people (and not just security researchers).
Please say more about how it could use people who aren't security researchers.
Readit Newsdfrankow commented on Ask HN: Recommend employers with positive social impact · Posted by u/sepiasaucer
This is an 'old man yells at cloud' bugbear of mine. I absolutely resent that every single interaction I have with a service provider now feels like a constant fight to not be tricked, bamboozled, or otherwise exploited. Goes hand-in-hand with so many services being deliberately hamstrung in order to shepherd customers into shitty compromises.
Like… I just want to exchange some amount money for goods and services without having to constantly arse around trying to figure out how much I'm being swindled. I'd easily fork over more money for services from a brand that I could generally expect isn't trying to take me for a ride with every interaction.
I totally agree but .. I feel companies evolve in an environment they do not control. If companies could just offer goods and services at a fair price without arsing around and be successful, I feel like we'd have a ton of such companies. I could be overly cynical.
The billing system runs each night.
This.
dfrankow commented on Show HN: Condorsay, a decision-making assistant with help from GPT-3 condorsay.com... · Posted by u/dfrankow
First it makes a chat thing pop up uninvited, taking up 1/4 of my mobile screen and covering up my input and the suggestion drop down.
Then I get a list of things I don't want to filter by.
Then I get this:
> We're glad you're here! In order to continue making better decisions, please login with a Google account by clicking the button below. We'll take you right back to your decision once you do!
Nope nope nope.
Thanks for your feedback.
We'll look into making the chat less obtrusive. I also don't love aggressive chat boxes, but didn't realize Intercom did that on mobile.
dfrankow commented on Show HN: Condorsay, a decision-making assistant with help from GPT-3 condorsay.com... · Posted by u/dfrankow
So... you tried to interfere in an election? I don't get that last part or why that's relevant: maybe you could have said "analyzed potential voter patterns" or some other weasel words. Either way I wish I'd read that before wasting my time trying this (see my other post). Thankfully I can now add you and your "team" to my growing list of activist brogrammers without actual ethics.
Wow, that's pretty harsh.
I don't accept the characterization as a "brogrammer without ethics."
I don't think anything I say would change your opinions, but I'm willing to answer questions if you have any you want answered.
dfrankow commented on Show HN: Condorsay, a decision-making assistant with help from GPT-3 condorsay.com... · Posted by u/dfrankow
Hi HN.
I'm Dan, CTO at Condorsay. We've built a tool that helps you make decisions, alone or with others.
* Summary
The short version of our tool:
- pick a goal (something to decide)
- pick factors important to the decision (helped by GPT-3)
- pick options (helped by GPT-3)
- use pairwise ranking to learn what you or a group think of the options
- see the results, including text notes (if you made the decision with others) and dissenters (people who disagree with the group)
NOTE: it does require a Google login to get past the "factors" screen. However, you get 5 decisions for free, so you can do everything for free. I read login makes HN cranky, but that is how our tool works. (A decision has to be owned by a user in the DB. Also, we are protecting against someone burning tons of money on GPT-3 calls.) Please don't be cranky.
* Motivation
We believe that decision-making could be improved by a tool that puts structure around it.
Some benefits:
- clarity: structure and record your decisions, alone or in a group
- focus: force hard choices with pairwise comparison
- revealed preferences: you actually don't always know what you think, but you learn through the simplest possible gut-level calls (pairwise choices). By the end, the results make sense, even if they aren't what you thought at first.
Further benefits if you’re making a decision in a group:
- alignment: get a group of people on the same page, by having the most important discussions quickly (i.e., where people disagree)
- independence: express your preferences before you see anyone else’s, to avoid information cascade
- asynchronicity: coordinate people in our increasingly remote-work world, mobile-friendly
Our scoring is straight-up Analytic Hierarchy Process (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_hierarchy_process). For AHP in Python, we use the lovely https://github.com/PhilipGriffith/AHPy.
Happy to talk about paired-choice decision-making algorithms, AHP, GPT-3, or other TLAs (three-letter acronyms).
* Background
James, Andrew, and I worked on Barometer, an effort to use Facebook measurement to promote or demote ads to help defeat Trump in 2020. Even in that effort, we picked what to do next in various different ad-hoc ways. James thought, "Why isn't there a good tool for this?" and convinced us we should try to build it.
I look forward to your feedback and questions. Please don't be cranky.
I am not in California, and was able to unsubscribe recently using a simple UI and I did not have to chat with anyone.
Where was the UI? Help us!
I think it’s worth pointing out that ad blockers only became popular because ads came to be so badly behaved.
The earliest iterations of banner ads weren’t that bad. They were basically print ads with some low-key animations added at worst, and many weren’t even graphical.
But then arose an arms race to create the most attention-grabbing, obnoxious ads possible, and ad supported pages quickly became neon disco raves that sucked up CPU cycles and sometimes even hijacked users’ browsers. This was the first tipping point.
And then ads became ever more invasive, fingerprinting users in any way possible. This was the second tipping point.
Had web ads stayed lightly-enhanced, unscripted print ads, I doubt anybody would care to install an ad blocker, but here we are today where doing so is practically essential not just from a privacy standpoint, but also from a security standpoint (since ads can exploit 0days).
So the industry largely brought this upon itself, at least in my eyes.
This is prisonner's dilemma / tragedy of the commons. The best-performing ads made more money, anyone who didn't grab attention enough would be strongly pushed towards grabbing more attention by industry norms. It was rational for every individual to grab more attention, but it was bad for the group.
Prisoner's dilemma problems are hard to solve.
dfrankow commented on Newark cops, with reform, didn't fire a single shot in 2020 nj.com/news/2021/01/newar... · Posted by u/mycologos
I'm not sure about entire departments, but for individual officers, it's not rare. Many if not most police officers never fire their weapon on duty for their entire careers.
For some perspective, there are around a million police officers in the US (https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&iid=249).
A lot of police shooting incidents have made the national news in recent years, but I can think of tens of such incidents over a decade.
Police kill about 1000-1200 people per year in the U.S., depending on who's counting. See for example the Washington Post data. So it's not just tens over a decade.