I honestly don't think it's possible for platforms to have "nice" algorithms like this without slowly slipping into the "maximum-engagement" algorithms we're plagued with now. I remember seeing this happen with Instagram, slowly going from a chronological feed to a confusing one where you can never be certain you've caught up with your network.
In a perfect world it would be great to have a platform that allows open-sourced algorithms for people to choose from, although that's a crazy pipe dream.
I re-realized this about a week ago when the "red button vs blue button" debate started appearing a lot on Reddit and Instagram. It's frustrating when every comment is just a shallow knee-jerk reaction from one side re-iterating their perspective or clowning on the other.
The whole debate could be summarized in a paragraph or two, but the social media environment is unfortunately curated towards diluted opinions (as you said) instead of nuanced ones.
All that to say I'm happy HN is still holding strong in terms of quality as compared to other platforms.
Personally, in almost all cases I think it'd be more convenient to just prompt AI myself (and maybe get the original prompt) instead of having to sift through overly-verbose AI output from an unknown prompt.
The mental gymnastics at play here are astounding.
Why would women acclimate to it and see it as the norm while men don't? If anything, exposing men to violence will also make them more violent in their future relationships.
Bottom line of all these comments here is "because women are too innocent / fragile / weak / ignorant". It's entirely unrelated to how men view them, of course.
What mental gymnastics? Women that are abused often marry an abuser because it's just the way things are in relationships.
For boys, fighting or threat of violence is just a fact of life. They are taught at a young age not to use that violence against someone that's not roughly physically matched, which includes women. That's why we tell boys never hit girls.
Part of the reason men cause so much violence is because of people like you, your exact mentality. Which says that's its expected for men to be violence, so, c'est la vie!
Men are not just like... inherently violent creatures, that's a stupid and toxic mentality. No, they're socialized to be violent by other men, who were also socialized to be violent.
> There was simply not much I could work with (what I thought at the time).
This has been my big blocker keeping me from talking to most people. I feel quite adept socially once I get going, but I can usually only get to that point through mutual interests or a solid conversation topic to kick off from.
I seem to usually psyche myself out because most starters feels too fake or unsubstantive. Compliments make sense, but could you elaborate on "break the pattern and make a joke, be sarcastic respectfully"?
I'll share my secret. Rather than trying to initiate a conversation with others, make it easy to initiate a conversation with you.
I started wearing hats outdoors to keep the sun off my balding head (I've had a sunburn up there, and I don't want another one), and the hat I had around to wear was from when I went as Ash Ketchum for Halloween. Or even just looking at my hat and smiling...
Nearly everywhere I go with that hat, I'll get someone saying nice hat, or professing their love for Pokemon, or asking me if I've caught them all.
This provides an opportunity for conversation and a shared interest. I can ask them if they're into the show, the books, the card game, the video games. How did they get started? What Pokemon is their favorite? Who's the best trainer? When did they start liking Jesse and James? Do they like old stuff or new stuff (I've got the OG hat from season 1).
It takes almost no effort to wear a hat and it helps me use my social skills when I'm out and about. And keeps the sun off my face a bit, and is handy for napping at conventions. You don't have to be Ash Ketchum, any character hat will do.
Also, bonus secret. When I'm sleep deprived, I get chatty... You may or may not, but if you do, use it for practice when it happens... and if you say something embarassing, you can always blame the lack of sleep. I was just at First Robotics worlds and the setup is harsh for sleep hygiene, but I had a ton of nice conversations with random robot people. Shared interest, opportunities and sleep deprivation combined. Otoh, much fewer notices of my hat at the convention center than I expected.
Even though typing them out may make them stupid but here are a few examples thinking out loud. Remember the body language is quite important and as you do more you start feeling more comfortable in your skin.
- Waiting for an elevator that never comes with two strangers. What I may say: I guess we'd be camping here tonight. Do you have your tent with you?
- Embarrassing moment: I hit my head lightly to something in front of 5 people: Act funny saying Oh can someone call an ambulance.
- Someone dropping yogurt from their spoon on their shirt and locking eye to eye with me realising I've been watching the moment: I would have an empathetic look and then act with an imaginary spoon picking from my own shirt and eating it.
Basically the kind of mild jokes/acts you would do and say to close people would work on strangers as well
I was in a similar boat, but recently started getting through that barrier. The thing that clicked for me is pretty simple: I was filtering myself and chipping away at that filter made a huge difference.
For example, I was in the elevator with a neighbour and they were carrying a lot of mugs. I said "that's a lot of mugs" and we ended up having a quick conversation.
In my case at least the conversation starters are all there in my head, but I'm discarding them hunting for the "perfect" one which obviously never comes and the moment passes.
> try to talk to someone
> run out of things to talk about
> feel awkward or dumb
is not really a bad outcome, physically speaking.
IMO ost people's anxiety about things X is not "fear of X" but rather "fear of fear" or "fear of embarrassment": they'll avoid something because it could go wrong and then... what? what if it goes wrong? nothing physically bad happens except that you're uncomfortable for a moment. But it's your subsequent reaction to the discomfort that is the actual source of the issue, not the discomfort itself. Which is why a lot of progress on anxiety can be made by focusing on the response: find ways of practicing being in the situation and being uncomfortable to a survivable degree such that you can learn to not be averse to the situation and can thus start adapting to it.
Just talk to them as if they were already your friend. Most of what you talk about with friends isn't just mutual interests and you start conversations with them all the time.
"I did the same thing; whoever designed these doors was a sadist." -
"Do you like that bag? I've been meaning to get a new one, I'm so tired of this one." -
"Now see, if we were as good looking/rich/smart as him we could have figured that out." -
"Is that thing broken again? I'm telling you, we're in the wrong business man." -
"Nothing to do with talent, it's a money and equipment problem, we're awesome at this." -
I've used each one of these in the past week with complete strangers, in neutral-to-unfamiliar surroundings, in passing, and the most hostile reaction I've gotten is "hahaha, I know right?" :)
Not sure what you mean by "not public", given that you can just search it up and find a Reuters article from March giving out his full name and background.
Even noticing the sarcasm, it just seems a bit... unnecessary?
It interrupts a discussion without adding much, so to me just seems snarky for no good reason.
While I appreciate sarcasm in a time of privacy crisis, I agree. We come to hackernews for discourse and try to follow the rules to have better discourse and comments that only provide sarcasm work against that.
I doubt the web will allow itself to be transformed into our idealized version of it, so the question seems to just be: do you want to be part of the obscure circle or not?
Neither choice is right or wrong, but I like the idea of a cool community amidst the enshittification of the rest of the web.
As an intern I feel the same everyday. It feels more natural to me to just keep digging into the codebase until I figure something out instead of asking for help.
Part of it is what you mentioned, as well as the fact that I sometimes feel bad for "wasting" a much more productive engineer's time.
In a perfect world it would be great to have a platform that allows open-sourced algorithms for people to choose from, although that's a crazy pipe dream.
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