
What Happens Next Will Amaze You - synacksynack
http://idlewords.com/talks/what_happens_next_will_amaze_you.htm
======
jonstokes
Ok, this is a fantastic piece that says a lot of useful and thoughtful things,
some of them critical about the priorities of the SF startup scene. And what
are a nontrivial portion of the HN comments doing? Complaining that he was
unfair to Elon freaking Musk!!

This is exactly the sort of techno-douchebaggery that the author is writing
about, so way to prove his point, nimrods.

The one redeeming quality of such comments is that they fall into the category
of "HN comments that are best read in Comic Book Guy voice", and when read
that way they're good for a chuckle.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
It's easier to call out the author on a nitpick than to thoughtfully refute
his arguments for the sake of racking up more imaginary internet points.

~~~
tedks
And the imaginary internet points incentive system HN uses implicitly
incentivizes those posts.

One way to stop this would be to have people who post low-value high-expected-
karma-yield posts get randomly banned. This would function as a variable
punishment and should be quite effective at training HN users.

~~~
nine_k
Research says that infrequent and severe punishment results in an increase of
the punishable behavior; it's quick, clear and consistent, but not severe,
punishment that actually curbs the punishable behavior.

I wish downvotes here could be only cast with a comment explaining the reason,
to improve clarity.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
I'm in huge agreement. Even if it's a drop-down to select off topic, abusive,
etc, it would be so much better than the smug silence of an unexplained
downvote.

------
mozumder
The correct answer is to never use programmatic ads.

Ever.

If you own a site, just curate a set of ads on your site that actually
enhances your sites appeal. A fashion site should have matching fashion ads. A
tech site should have matching tech ads. A local site should have matching
local ads. Reach out to advertisers to get these ads. Never use an algorithm.
You, as an editor, should be better than the algorithms. Ads are supposed to
be useful to your audience, instead of being annoying. People buy fashion
magazines - filled with 600 pages of ads- and Sunday newspapers BECAUSE of the
ads. They should want to visit your website as well because of your ads.

The worst thing you can do for your site is to place out-of-context ads in the
middle of your site. Can you imaging if Vogue.com decided to place Flash SSD
ads on their site? This is how you destroy an audience, and as a publisher,
your number one concern should be to grow your audience.

Once you curate a set of ads for your site, you'll find that click-through
rates and conversion are far higher than random programmatic ads. You should
know your audience, and the kind of ads that would appeal to them. Mark ads as
content in your CMS. This avoids ad-blockers.

Curating ads is how advertising has always worked, and will continue to work,
after all these programmatic garbage goes away.

~~~
krisdol
Intent-driven ads are far more relevant to a site's audience than hand-picked,
static ones. They have much higher CTR and conversion rates, when done right.
You're asking sites to remove sources of income that people find relevant in
exchange for ads that some higher up in marketing thinks relates to its users.

Not all publishers subscribe to the low quality Google AdExchange. In fact,
they typically have a variety of ad bids, and the highest bidding ads are
chosen for placement programmatically.

Edit: I just visited vogue.com. Guess who served me my ad? doubleclick. It was
relevant and I bet it was programmatic. Programmatic does not mean random. Ad
placement programs have a lot more data to work with than any individual at
the publisher. There's a lot more sense to it than manual prediction

~~~
j2kun
Does this become less true the more niche the website is? People who read my
math blog should be served ads for technical things (math books, online
courses, etc), regardless of recent search history.

In reality, I have a math blog with ads for Cap'n Crunch cereal and strange
new yogurts which seem very distracting and poorly-targeted when compared to,
say, ads for O'Reilly math/CS books or a MOOC on probability and statistics.

~~~
nemothekid
>I have a math blog with ads for _Cap 'n Crunch cereal and strange new
yogurts_

Seems like to me the algorithm gods decided that your site was better suited
to advertise to parents of toddlers.

------
Fiahil
The company I work for is going to pivot towards re-targeting (we're making
recommendation engines, now). So, I've come to explore a bit this new
industry, and I am under the impression that it's completely rotten to the
core. The reason? I have been in meetings where no one would blinked an eye
(even, sometimes, applaud the idea) when people would ask if we could turn on
a laptop's webcam, and read if a visitor have seen ads or not. If internet
needs tighter regulatory control, please, let's begin with advertisers.

I don't think I can withstand working with that kind of people in the long
term, this is really soul-destroying.

~~~
mtbcoder
Just out of curiosity, how would turning on a web cam determine if a visitor
saw an ad or not? I'm missing the logic.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
There probably wasn't any logic to it. It was probably the equivilant of when
a PM or not technical person asks a developer, "Can't we just put in an IF
statement?"

~~~
chii
this skit is very apropos
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg)

------
kasey_junk
Let me start by saying I love idlewords writing and largely agree with his
proposed rules (even if he did demonize something like 1/3 of my working life
with 1 sentence).

> Ban on Third-Party Ad Tracking

My experience in finance makes me skeptical that this will play out the way
that he hopes. Most of the financial regulation in the world started with laws
"average people can understand". Things like Banks should have enough risk
free capital to cover outstanding deposits and banks shouldn't make
"speculative investments". But it turns out that the devil is in the details
with these sorts of things. What is a "speculative investment" etc? And there
are dramatic financial mismatches between the people trying to work around the
laws and the people trying to enforce them.

So when I hear "information the site has about the visitor" being the only
thing a publisher can share with the ad network, I have to wonder

a) can publishers share data with each other? If not how does that impact
things like open ids, publisher networks etc.

b) doesn't this rule simply give even more of a stranglehold to giant
companies like facebook and google? How does having a couple of giant extra-
governmental tracking agencies make our lives better than having a huge
network of them? If advertisers can only serve the ads they want on
facebook/google, won't that mean that publishers will be levered into only
using those sources for publishing? How do you break out of that cycle?

~~~
idlewords
I think this is a very trenchant criticism of what I said, and I appreciate
you not taking offense at me!

For a) I imagine data sharing is fine, except that you can't share behavioral
data about users, and you can't use any of the shared data for advertising.
That said, I know very little about how publisher networks work and would
appreciate pushback.

b) is unfortunately quite right. If you're sufficiently pessimistic, one thing
that makes having giant tracking agencies better is that they're more likely
to not get hacked or leak your data. But I agree that this is a real problem
and one that my proposals from this talk will exacerbate.

~~~
tptacek
I'm still a bit confused about how right-to-download helps non-nerds. I think
I have a minor allergic reaction to things that are (a) so hard to implement
that they raise barriers to newcomers and (b) only help the nerd class.

~~~
idlewords
Some ways I can think of that help non-nerds:

\- lets you make backups you physically control

\- prevents vendor lock-in

\- lets you spot and correct mistakes in things like your user profile

\- lets you verify that things you deleted were actually deleted

\- promotes competition by making it easier to take your data and go elsewhere

\- protects your privacy by forcing vendors to keep better track internally of
what user data they're storing

~~~
tptacek
You don't think these are things that mostly just nerds care about?

~~~
patio11
The most clarifying moment for this was Google's comprehensive data download,
which the FB Growth team found out about and _actively, scalably encouraged
people to use_ , at which point Google got institutionally offended and pulled
it. It later got restored under a scary This Is Actually An Advanced Techy
Thing; Pay No Attention To The Data Behind The Curtain warning.

------
pascalmahe
Thank you for this talk.

Especially the part about fighting against the tobacco industry. It really
made me realize that this is a fight that can be won. I honestly thought this
was a lost battle.

It will, however, be a more subtle battle as the advertising industry (Big Ads
?) cannot be linked to something as clearly detremental as lung cancer and
will be quick to point out that the technology developped can help fight
terrorism (a winning buzzword bingo if ther's ever been one) by identifying
behavior on the internet, including so-called dangerous ones.

~~~
magoghm
Michael Crichton on the Unproven Dangers of Secondhand Smoke
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGoZ-b1OaW4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGoZ-b1OaW4)

~~~
collyw
Not accoding to the study mentioned here:

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2013/12/12/study-
fi...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2013/12/12/study-finds-no-
link-between-secondhand-smoke-and-cancer/)

------
sandworm101
Don't tell us here on hackernews or any other geek forum. Go to a RNC or DNC
event. Go convince Trump and/or Hillary that corporations and rich people
should pay 1950s-style tax rates. Go sit in front of wealthy old people and
suggest socialism for the benefit of the young. Go tell the afraid and well-
armed that they need to spend less money being so afraid and well-armed. Make
sure to bring your running shoes.

~~~
bambax
Bernie Sanders is doing exactly that, and so far it seems to be working well.

------
JacobJans
> I don't believe there's a technology bubble, but there is absolutely an
> advertising bubble. When it bursts, companies are going to be more desperate
> and will unload all the personal data they have on us to absolutely any
> willing buyer. And then we'll see if all these dire warnings about the
> dangers of surveillance were right.

If you read this paragraph critically, it is easy to find the problem with the
argument in this article.

There is a fundamental failure to explain how the privacy concerns are having
a negative impact right now.

The cigarette comparison is ridiculous, because cancer is an obvious problem.
Cancer is bad. Cigarettes cause cancer. It's is very easy to understand that.

What is the "cancer" correlation with online ads?

Something that might happen in the future _if_ the advertising bubble bursts?

I'm not saying that there isn't a serious problem. It's just that the negative
affects are not clearly stated. And that is a problem -- especially if you
want to cause change.

People don't want cancer. That's why cigarettes are almost universally seen as
bad. With online advertising, what is the correlation? I don't see one.

edit: I want to add, that in my experience as a small publisher and a small
advertiser, I have no problem with click fraud. The robots are not winning. (I
spend around $30-40k a year in ads, generate significantly more in ad
revenue.)

~~~
kbenson
I agree. In general, I found this presentation to ramble far more and make
weird connections than some of his other ones, which I remember liking.
Presentations and talks such as _Web Design: The first 100 years_ [1] (even if
it was a while back and I don't remember it all that clearly), and _Barely
succeed! It 's easier!_[2] (which I saw within the last couple of days) are
quite good (if memory serves).

1:
[http://idlewords.com/talks/web_design_first_100_years.htm](http://idlewords.com/talks/web_design_first_100_years.htm)

2:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Vt8zqhHe_c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Vt8zqhHe_c)

------
Artistry121
I liked this article's start but its finish went in a very different
direction. Denmark has a ton of things right about it and it's an amazing
place - but mostly due to social conditions that don't exist elsewhere in the
world.

Denmark was almost entirely homogeneous until the 1990s and is slowly becoming
less so - but in a very racially charged way. Their fastest growing political
party, the Danish People's Party, is heavily anti-immigration and anti-non-
danish folks. It's also has an incredibly well educated population due to
decisions made 50+ years ago that would take a massive effort and timescale to
implement in the US - even if it would work.

Also the definition of rich in Denmark is equivalent to lower-middle class in
the US (with healthcare added). Homes are smaller, cars are fewer, people
spend more of their take home salary on food and other basics... The main
difference being it is less costly to screw up in Denmark.

Things are overwhelmingly getting better for everyone and even the poorest in
America... [http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2015/09/were-living-through-
the...](http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2015/09/were-living-through-the-greatest-
period-in-world-history/)

...and the value of improving computers, technology, biology, space travel on
a universal time scale is huge on a utilitarian scale. Things have never
improved so quickly in so many ways.

Finally - "be the change you wish to see" applies here more than ever. No one
is stopping individuals from donating large swaths of their money to causes -
in fact almost all of those donations come out of taxable income. Targeting
individuals to do great things rather than vague policy points may be a better
option when policy has overwhelmingly worked in most areas.

~~~
Confusion

      The main difference being it is less costly to screw up in Denmark.
    

We'd call that 'having bad luck'. That's the difference between the US and
Western Europe in one sentence. We don't think you deserve a life of extreme
poverty, homelessness and worse if you 'screw up' in being born with a
disability, lower intelligence, to bad parents or in another way that causes
the system to not allow you to be the worker you were supposed to be. We don't
believe most people 'screw up': we believe they are unlucky and believe we
could have been them.

------
thaumaturgy
"San Francisco is filthy and has a homeless problem it refuses to take care of
and does its best to either ignore or address indirectly. It is full of tech
elite who are completely disconnected from the world around them. ... I live
in San Francisco."

I thought this was a little hilarious. For so many people who live in the Bay
Area, a favorite way to pass the time is to complain about how terrible it is.
I too thought it was terrible, so I made the irrational decision to no longer
live there.

Everything else in the piece was pretty solid, as usual.

I want to hijack the bit on the EU cookie law to bring up a recent annoyance
though: does anyone else here have their browser configured to block cookies
by default? I do, on my main browser. Have you got any idea just how many
sites completely fail to work at all with cookies turned off? I don't just
mean sites that require a login or paywalled sites like NYTimes, and I don't
mean sites where some functionality is crippled. I mean sites like Washington
Post, which (apparently intermittently) fail to render any content at all. For
those of us that are actively taking some steps to protect our privacy, the
web is gradually becoming outright hostile.

~~~
scott_karana
Admittedly, idlewords is a self-employed immigrant(?) sole-proprietor running
a self-sufficient small business with open financial books and an equally open
business model.

Far from the regular demographic starting or running our current decade's
"unicorn" startups with million dollar Series B and burnrates larger than some
small countries.

It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if a good portion of his time or
money went towards improving the state of affairs in SF. ;-)

------
colordrops
From the article:

> In a television interview this week, Musk said: "I'm trying to do useful
> things." Then he outlined his plan to detonate nuclear weapons on Mars.

> These people are the face of our industry.

It's hard to take the rest of the article seriously when the author is
purposely misquoting people to make them look bad. The comment in question was
said on Late Night with Stephen Colbert, when asked what the fast way to heat
up Mars would be, as he posited several methods to do it. He later indicated
that nuclear bombs would not be the preferred method.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
The entire article is written to be humorous, but that's doesn't mean he
doesn't have a point here. Namely, this mindless pursuit of space is
hilariously culture-deaf because in the end, if all these miracles somehow
come to pass, we'll just bring our stupid problems with us to our colonies. In
a few generations we'll have homeless people on Mars and a tech bubble
exploding there as well.

If we can't fix these problems locally, how do we expect to fix them remotely?

~~~
TeMPOraL
The article most definitly does not have a (valid) point here. Idlewords is
painting Elon as a bored billionaire who wants to nuke Mars because he has
nothing better to do. It's completely ignoring both the reasons (and context)
of the quote, and the fact that said 'bored billionaire' makes good and
impactful progress in three important big problems of humanity - namely,
energy safety, transportation and access to space.

Even what you call "mindless pursuit of space" isn't so; SpaceX aims for space
for known, well-thought and well-defined reasons. It's not just fueled by
imagination.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
SpaceX is COTS welfare for LEO launches to the soon to be retired ISS. It is
not on track for Mars colonization. Its utility is vastly exaggerated by the
types of people who read HN and reddit. While it is impressive, it is just
cheaper launches for certain edge cases. Colonization and terraforming other
worlds is pure fiction right now and going on TV and yelling about dropping
nukes to make Mars human safe looks absolutely crazy to even educated people.

The article paints Musk fairly, as an out of touch dreamer with crazy ideas.
He steps over homeless people to rush to television producers to spout off the
same canned futurism we've been hearing for decades. His version is slightly
more plausible, but it, of course, ignores all social issues; issues that will
only follow us into space. The same way futurists predicted a moon landing but
never imagine women would get to vote, for example.

Criticizing Musk for putting the cart before the horse is valid. Futurist talk
is cheap and historically wrong. Men like Musk are the face of tech and its a
little embarrassing to see stuff like this. Not to mention his hysterical
tirades about how AI will enslave humanity.

Lastly, whats my incentive to migrate to a new colony if its just going to
have the same problems we have here on Earth?

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _SpaceX is COTS welfare for LEO launches to the soon to be retired ISS. It
> is not on track for Mars colonization._

That's a very cynical view based on... I don't even know exactly. NASA is not
the only customer of SpaceX, LEO doesn't end with ISS, and the path towards
Mars was laid more-less explicitly since day one. They're on track, even if
behind the schedule.

> _The article paints Musk fairly, as an out of touch dreamer with crazy
> ideas. He steps over homeless people to rush to television producers to
> spout off the same canned futurism we 've been hearing for decades. His
> version is slightly more plausible, but it, of course, ignores all social
> issues; issues that will only follow us into space. The same way futurists
> predicted a moon landing but never imagine women would get to vote, for
> example._

That smells strongly of copenhagen interpretation of ethics[0]. So Musk is
trying to solve _a_ problem (or three problems) for humanity, and suddenly he
has to be responsible for _all_ the problems? Why aren't we criticizing Bill
Gates here for helping Africans fight malaria instead of helping Americans
fight homelesness at home? Also; SpaceX, Tesla and Solar City are creating
jobs. Which counts for doing _something_ towards the problem. What exactly are
people criticizing Musk here doing themselves for the homeless?

[0] - [http://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-
ethi...](http://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/)

------
jonstokes
This is a great piece, but I have to post a correction for this: "It boils
down to this: fake websites serving real ads to fake traffic for real money."

There are, in fact, also real websites serving real ads to fake traffic for
real money. When publishers promise an advertiser impressions or downloads or
some other metric on a campaign, and then the traffic fails to materialize,
the marketing department can always call in the bots. It happens at some of
the biggest and most reputable sites out there, and what's crazy is the
agencies (middlemen who buy ads on behalf of publishers) know it and don't
care because hey, the metrics got met and they got paid their cut!

~~~
idlewords
Thank you, I appreciate the correction! That tactic hadn't occurred to me.

~~~
jonstokes
Drop me an email and I can tell you all about it :) (my first name at my full
name dot com).

------
Kalium
> The tech industry is not responsible for any of these problems. But it's
> revealing that through forty years of unimaginable growth, and eleven years
> of the greatest boom times we've ever seen, we've done nothing to fix them.

This bothers me. This bothers me a lot. There are two problems with this.

First, it's not tech's problem to fix. It's a city-wide problem. Faulting tech
for not solving problems that are not tech's to solve is at best dishonest.

Second, this ignores the way that these problems have been codified as
unsolvable by the city. For instance, you'll find a lot of support for housing
first approaches among the tech community. You'll find virtually zero real
support in the city, because that approach requires building housing. We all
know how well _that_ goes over. Pretty much any change encounters similar
entrenched resistance.

So we wind up with a tech community that finds itself incapable of solving
problems for everyone. We cannot contribute to our neighborhoods because our
neighbors blow their tops when we try. We do the next best thing - we solve
problems for ourselves. It's very far from ideal, but at least we can make
ourselves a bit less miserable. We're going to get yelled at either way, so we
might as well do so in comfort.

Want to see this change? Start by looking at why we stop caring about the
communities we're in. I know I can't be bothered to care about people who have
done their best to make me feel unwelcome from day one. "We don't want your
kind here" does not move me to empathy - or funding local artists.

~~~
forgottenpass
_First, it 's not tech's problem to fix. It's a city-wide problem. Faulting
tech for not solving problems that are not tech's to solve is at best
dishonest._

Tech workers living in the city are no less of residents because of their job.
Tech is no less a participant of the city than any other business sector. Your
post is basically the Bystander Effect in action.

~~~
Kalium
Does that mean we should blame the finance industry for also not cleaning up
the indigent? Because I'm on board with that.

I've seen what happens to people who advocate for things like more housing in
SF. Do I need to be personally crucified in the media in order to be allowed
suggest that there are major problems? Is it the Bystander Effect to note that
a lot of people are trying all the things that are supposed to work and
they're collectively accomplishing fuck-all? And that maybe throwing more time
and effort and money into what's not working may not be wise?

But nevermind that. What do you think I should do? If you answer is to get
involved in (local politics|my neighborhood group|planning board|whatever),
then at what point am I allowed to give up in frustration at no problems being
solved?

Right now I'd love for there to be some course of action that doesn't have a
lot of precedent as a monstrous waste of time. I'll settle for being allowed
to say that something isn't working.

------
renlo
When websites become regulated web developers will be like the general
contractors of today. Only licensed web developers will be able to legally
build websites, keeping everything up to the regulatory code. There will be
inspectors and red tape.

I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

~~~
pjc50
Building codes are there for a reason. Have we had our equivalent of Tacoma
Narrows or Triangle Shirtwaist yet? The event that Schneier said would be the
"privacy Exxon Valdez"? Possibly the OPM hack qualifies as the latter.

Provided we get codes that recognise the difference between personal, small
business, and large business, it won't be so bad.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Various governments are already attempting to push "building codes" for
privacy in software.

[http://gadgets.ndtv.com/internet/features/deleting-a-
whatsap...](http://gadgets.ndtv.com/internet/features/deleting-a-whatsapp-
message-could-become-illegal-in-india-742503)

[http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2015/07/08/421251662/...](http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2015/07/08/421251662/fbi-director-says-agents-need-access-to-encrypted-
data-to-preserve-public-safety)

~~~
pjc50
You cite two examples against privacy, but not the EU (mostly) pro-privacy
data protection rulings. Or accessibility requirements.

In the long term trying to preserve privacy entirely through guerilla action
isn't going to work (see China), and it certainly isn't going to work for
_everyone_ , so we need to take advantage of the normal democratic channels to
achieve the right changes.

------
hliyan
This seemed a bit uncalled for:

"Here's Elon Musk.

In a television interview this week, Musk said: "I'm trying to do useful
things." _Then he outlined his plan to detonate nuclear weapons on Mars_.

These people are the face of our industry."

Italics mine.

~~~
buffoon
I agree with him. Billionaires are prescriptive. "I will solve this problem".

It doesn't hurt to ask what problems need solving.

Ultimately this just isn't altruism but it is promoted as whilst people are in
deep shit all around him.

I'm not really sure what my point is but I suspect it is a new form of
hypocrisy.

~~~
hliyan
There's truth in that, but in Musk's case, he's already done a great deal for
the world with Tesla and SpaceX. If Mars is what he wants to do with the rest
of his money, that is his choice. Certainly better than what certain other
billionaires are doing with theirs.

~~~
Draiken
As much as I'd love to own a Tesla car and it does show a lot of innovation in
the right direction, it's still a luxury sports car that only few very rich
people can own.

If he built an electric car for the masses, that would be a big deal for the
world.

Of course he's pushing inovation, but he still hasn't done "a great deal for
the world".

Maybe he caused some changes in the US, I'm not in a position to see that, but
saying he changed the world is quite a stretch

~~~
vlucas
> If he built an electric car for the masses, that would be a big deal for the
> world.

This is exactly Tesla's goal with the Model 3, targeted at $35,000.

I don't think you understand the amount of time and money required to reach
mass production scale of affordable vehicles. Tesla was very wise to start
with high-margin sports and luxury cars, because it gives them the capital
needed to continue re-investing in production capacity and battery technology
for more affordable cars in the future.

Tesla is playing a long game, and so far it's working. The popularity of Tesla
alone has driven other auto makers to step up their electric car game, which
is indeed a "great deal for the world" to help get us all off combustion
engines.

~~~
Draiken
Interesting, was not aware of that project.

Agreed that maybe the luxury car is the right way to start his attempt with a
healthy cash flow.

In fact, I'm a big fan of people like him, who have the money and instead of
just playing the markets to get more of it, he uses it to build something that
can eventually help us.

The main reason for my comment was that some people idolize him like he has
cured cancer or erradicated world hunger. These people should to take a step
back :)

------
kriro
Very interesting and thought provoking piece. Some pretty strong points being
made. I'm on board with the "valuation-crazy" criticism and the "San Francisco
sucks" part was also interesting.

I really like the suggested "creative commons type licenses for websites" or
promises. I have doubts that it'll work but its a reasonable instrument that
I'd like to see. There's already ways of promising these things but I like the
idea of having nice icons and solid branding for it like you get with CC.

I disagree with some points, most notably the "money sitting offshore doing
nothing" one. It's not hoarded it's saved to be spent later (which is actually
a good thing). The central planning argument also seems contradictory. He
rails against big VC making decisions about what to do but then it seems that
his suggestion for a fix is letting some other elite (himself?) decide. I'd
much rather have the people that invest their money make the decisions than
some social norm that says "space flight/immortality is not a
desireable/realistic goal"

------
rm_-rf_slash
Of all the recommendations in this piece, I think the right to be offline is
by far the most necessary. I simply do not trust my devices not to track me
without permission. I have no way of knowing whether or not my mic and webcam
are on at any time and if someone in Maryland is staring at my bloodshot eyes
staring at the New York Times.

Every Internet-connected device should have a hardware off switch, same for
cameras and microphones. I would be interested to hear the opinions of people
who disagree.

~~~
copsarebastards
Tape a piece of tin foil over your webcam.

~~~
forgottenpass
There are two groups that put tape over their webcams in large enough numbers
for me to casually notice a trend. Grandparents, and people who work in
infosec.

------
rl3
_> I've also met people on the YouTube ads team, and they hate their lives and
want to die._

Maybe those informational widgets that pop up when you Google suicide-related
terms didn't actually arise from a sense of humanity or civic duty, but from a
desire to reduce employee turnover in their ad divisions. _/ s_

Macabre humor aside, I actually wonder if there's any organizations out there
funding ads targeted at suicidal individuals. Search terms can only go so far,
and ad networks have the ability to gain a far more complete picture. You'd
almost think it's something ad networks would partner up on _pro bono_.

Moreover, it's not hard to imagine imperfect targeting being beneficial,
_e.g._ a family member being alerted to a loved one's state of mind via
receiving the ads themselves. Obviously there's quite a few ways such a scheme
could backfire or otherwise have adverse effects, though it is interesting to
contemplate.

~~~
seiji
Asking google for suicide topics usually starts off with a big info box (non-
ad unit) of:

    
    
      Need help? United States:
      1 (800) 273-8255
      National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
      
      Hours: 24 hours, 7 days a week
      Languages: English, Spanish
      Website: www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org
    

As for YouTube ad engineers, pretty much everybody on the planet knows forced
pre-roll youtube ads are a bad idea. Nobody _wants_ to watch them. So, the
engineers implementing these things must be under corporate (read: clueless)
pressure to crapify the user experience solely to appease management.

(edit: It's also hilarious how ad tech people refuse to recognize how evil and
backwards their entire business models are. They vehemently defend, downvote,
and mob-mentality their way through the cognitive dissonance of hurting
hundreds of millions of users in exchange for retaining their jobs. Because,
after all, if _I 'm_ doing the work, it can't be bad, right? _I 'm_ not a bad
person, so the people arguing against me must be the evil ones.

One comment theme that seems to get instant downvotes on HN: the concept you
are not entitled to track and record every client-side user action. So many
people assume invasive tracing and recording of all user behavior is "just how
the world works" and "if we don't do it, we'll fall behind." Kinda military-
oligarchy mindset, isn't it? If we don't have all the power, who knows what
people will do!)

~~~
rl3
> _Asking google for suicide topics usually starts off with a big info box
> (non-ad unit) of:_

Yeah, I wasn't suggesting those were ads.

> _... pretty much everybody on the planet knows forced pre-roll youtube ads
> are a bad idea. Nobody wants to watch them._

Totally agree. I'm amazed a better method hasn't been implemented.

------
osmode
I'm so glad someone finally has courage to comment so poignantly on what San
Francisco has become. This sentence will stay with me: "But we expect that
people will trust us to reinvent their world with software even though we
can't make our own city livable"

~~~
pconner
SF is pretty culturally hostile to outsiders. Maybe if more residents felt
like it was "their" city, rather than just the place they live, they would
feel a greater sense of responsibility to improve it.

This problem probably affects most cities with a large transplant population.

~~~
veritas3241
> This problem probably affects most cities with a large transplant
> population.

I've been thinking about this a lot mainly because I live in Nashville which
is experiencing its own growth challenges with a lot of transplants. I've been
here since 2008 (TN since 98) and I'm really only just now being to take
"ownership" of the city. Perhaps it's because I'm out of school finally and
thinking more long term, but it's tough to consider a city "yours" when you
know you're going to be transitioning (potentially) to a new job and a new
city.

But since I've got a job here, it seems like it's more appropriate to put more
effort into my own hometown. It's tough to get past that mindset that you're
only renting the city and somebody else will clean it up. Part of it is there
seems to be a stigma against having an opinion about how a city should be
without a certain amount of time spent living in the city. This just
encourages, in my mind, a bad attitude towards active civic involvement. But
it has to be tempered with the understanding that a transplant does have less
experience of living in the city.

I don't know where I'm really going with this. Maybe all I'm saying is young
people, I think, probably view the city they study in as they do their student
housing or an apartment: something they rent and somebody else's problem.

------
vlehto
>Eighty years of effective technical regulation (and massive penalties for
fraud) have made commercial aviation the safest form of transportation in the
world.

De Havilland comet crashes and the ensuing bankruptcy probably is the real
reason why flying is safe.

Usually when regulating succeeds, the industry is with the government trying
to get loose guns back in the line.

------
anonymousab
> If they could get away with it, they would demand that you have webcam
> turned on, to make sure you are human. And to track your eye movements, and
> your facial expression, and round and round we go.

The window of acceptability needs to shift a couple of times (just a couple)
before this happens.

The next few years should amaze indeed.

~~~
hammock
The tech is already on the roadmap for set top boxes and roku-type devices to
scan the room for wifi and Bluetooth devices in order to determine how many
many people (and who) are in the room, and tailor the ads accordingly.

------
rplnt
I know HN is pedantic about original titles, but shitty ones like this are
better to be edited.

~~~
pja
In this case, the URL alone is enough to tell you that it’s probably worth
reading.

~~~
TorKlingberg
I assume you are familiar with idlewords.com since before?

~~~
_delirium
It's the blog of Maciej Cegłowski, somewhat famous in certain circles for
running successful one-man business Pinboard [1]. His blog posts end up on
here pretty often too [2].

[1] [http://pinboard.in/](http://pinboard.in/)

[2]
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=idlewords.com&sort=byPopularit...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=idlewords.com&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

------
oldmanjay
I only sort of get it. What does the idea of reining in advertisers run amok
have to do with accepting socialism as the one true government? The connection
seems tenuous.

~~~
a_bonobo
To quote:

>But we expect that people will trust us to reinvent their world with software
even though we can't make our own city livable.

Where does it propose "socialism as the one true government"?

>I would urge you to get back in touch with this side of yourselves, climb in
the longboats, and impose modern, egalitarian, Scandinavian-style social
democracy on the rest of us at the point of a sword.

~~~
gadders
I think you answered your own question there.

~~~
gjm11
It is only in the United States that "modern Scandinavian-style social
democracy" is apparently indistinguishable from socialism.

Socialism means large-scale state ownership -- or some other kind of
collective ownership by The People -- of "the means of production", in the
hope of controlling production to match need. Scandinavian-style social
democracy means high taxes, a generous welfare state, and quite a lot of
government regulation, in the hope of keeping people safe, healthy, and
adequately fed and housed. You might worry that there might be a slippery
slope from the latter to the former, but they aren't at all the same.

~~~
morgante
Uh, considering that many major European parties explicitly identify as
"socialists," I'm not sure it's the US that's confused.

It's the US that is confused with the notion that socialism == communism.

~~~
jessaustin
Perhaps 'gjm11 is caught on Pinker's euphemism treadmill? If "socialist" is no
longer a word we can use in polite company, how will we signify that political
and economic arrangement?

~~~
gjm11
I don't think I'm caught on the euphemism treadmill; I have no problem
describing some systems and some people as socialist. (And, for the avoidance
of doubt, I don't regard it as an insult to do so.) I just don't think it
applies accurately to Scandinavian-style social democracy.

~~~
jessaustin
That's reasonable. If you wouldn't mind, you could help understanding by
pointing to particular aspects of the Scandinavian style that disqualify the
"socialist" classification. After all, there are some people on HN who
unironically describe USA as "socialist".

------
morgante
These advertising proposals are actually surprisingly reasonable and
acceptable. It's nice to see someone admitting that eliminating advertising
entirely, or eliminating all JavaScript, is not a tenable goal.

Having worked at several publishers, this is actually an advertising model we
could support. It would work better for users, publishers, _and_ most
advertisers. The only people who would lose out are the AdTech firms.

Unfortunately, I think getting there requires that the people who want this
sort of thing start acting reasonable. Instead of constantly demanding the
death of all JavaScript, or an end to a century-old business model, demand
measured change like this.

------
soneca
Very interesting analogy between VC and communist central planners. Makes a
lot of sense.

~~~
mdpopescu
Followed by a conclusion that communism would be the solution, which makes a
lot less sense...

~~~
samwiseg
He said social democracy, which has nothing to do with communism.

~~~
yarvin9
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Social_Democratic_Labo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Social_Democratic_Labour_Party)

"The RSDLP later split into Majority and Minority factions, with the Majority
(in Russian: "Bolshevik") faction eventually becoming the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union."

------
Paul_S
I don't understand the disdain for technically literate people shown a few
times in the article. Solving the problems is the better solution but in the
face of how impossible it is due to the changing landscape maybe it would be a
good idea to educate tech illiterate people instead. I think it's a viable
alternative with possible positive side-effects of getting enough momentum to
make legal solutions possible as well.

Additionally, sad news is that there a lot of people who don't care about
their privacy or the homeless however hard _you_ find that to believe.

------
wodenokoto
It starts of by saying there is a video version. Does anyone have a link?

~~~
halosghost
I have not found one yet; I do not believe one has been posted at the moment.
But, I would love to see the actual talk and the Q&A as well. Here's hoping
one gets posted.

------
webXL
I just have to take issue with his claim about privacy being a luxury good:

    
    
      In this world, privacy becomes a luxury good. Mark Zuckerberg 
      buys the four houses around his house in Palo Alto, to keep 
      hidden what the rest of us must share with him.
    

What nonsense! The neighbors still live there and pay him instead of a bank.
He did it to prevent a developer from forcing him to move, essentially.

And no one forces us to give our data to him. Don't abuse language. Only the
state can legally use force, and they often do it illegally as well.

I don't exactly have warm and fuzzies about Mark, but there's enough truthful
appalling material out there to support your claims about the lack of privacy.

------
spopejoy
_Here is Bill Maris, of Google Ventures. This year alone Bill gets to invest
$425 million of Google 's money, and his stated goal is to live forever.

He's explained that the worst part of being a billionaire is going to the
grave with everyone else. “I just hope to live long enough not to die.”_

This is my FAVORITE example of SV silliness. "Waah death! But I'm TOO RICH to
die!"

------
barrkel
I must have missed the bit where how this simpler new world will get rid of
ad-clicking bots is explained.

~~~
pja
I guess if we’re returning to a simpler age then all ads are display ads &
rates are set by guesstimating website reach using old school methods: things
like actually going out and surveying your target audience to see how many of
them actually read the site in question.

If the new normal is “We've sold our customer’s privacy and personal data to
the highest bidder and yet we’re still wasting 50% of our ad spend & have
allowed a faceless Silicon Valley company to insert itself in between us and
our customers.” then the old way of doing things suddenly looks quite
attractive by comparison.

------
coldtea
> _The people in 1973 were no more happy to live in that smoky world than we
> would be, but changing it seemed unachievable._

Not even remotely true. "some" people were no more happy. Most were not just
used to it, but enjoying it.

------
kyberias
I love the bare-bones layout of this page. Very easy to read. All bloggers
should learn something.

~~~
Jgrubb
Shorter lines are easier to read. Not like this --
[https://aws.amazon.com/message/5467D2/](https://aws.amazon.com/message/5467D2/)
\-- which is impossible to read without narrowing your browser.

------
cpr
Oh, and these idealistic socialists you want to take over and transform San
Francisco? Good luck dealing with them once they're in power. Oh, wait,
doesn't SF already have a fairly socialistic city government? It's done so
well for the quality of life...

The real problem is crony capitalism, where large corporations have captured
government regulatory processes, and effectively work hand-in-glove to
maintain control of world processes that only benefit the "elite".

------
Intermernet
So we're now at the point where Douglas Adams' Electric Monk[1], [2] idea
becomes viable, except for watching ads, not for believing in things for
you...

Someone should start an "advertising consumption as a service" company where
we can pay a subscription to a 3rd party to provide software to consume all of
the ads that would otherwise be targeted at the user! Some of that fee can
then be sent to the original advertisers as a return on otherwise-lost
advertising revenue!

Please note, that this in _no way_ resembles a protection racket.

<removes tongue from cheek>

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirk_Gently%27s_Holistic_Detec...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirk_Gently%27s_Holistic_Detective_Agency#Characters_in_Dirk_Gently.27s_Holistic_Detective_Agency)

[2]:
[http://theelectricmonk.com/ElectricMonk.html](http://theelectricmonk.com/ElectricMonk.html)

------
spdustin
I suspect it won't be long before ad networks supply self-hosted proxies in
multiple languages for sites owners to use. Or, since ad blockers primarily
use DNS names, ad networks could simply add CNAME support to their
infrastructure. Granted, either approach would injure the ad networks' ability
to track you, and expose those cookies to the site owner, but I would suggest
that fingerprinting tech is mature enough that proxying the request won't
prevent the ad networks from correlating identities.

It's cat-and-mouse. We're enjoying the benefits of a faster, safer and cheaper
web (as are the developers behind those content sites using the ads, I
reckon), but my prediction is that those benefits will be short lived. There
are cleverer people than the browsing masses, they will find a way.

------
pinaceae
Love how his use of humor, like the red/pirate/danish flag just go right over
the head of commenters here. HN stereotypes in full effect.

It's a talk by someone of European origin in Europe. It is not a science talk,
it is meant to provoke thought and yes, entertain.

geez.

------
13thLetter
It's unfortunate how this piece goes off the rails towards the end, because
it's so well-written and elegantly persuasive.

a) The parlous state of San Francisco does not strike me as relevant to the
issue of how advertising violates privacy on the Internet.

b) And then when he does get on the topic he exhibits the same blind spot he's
decrying in other techies -- ignoring the role of decades of foolish
ideological governance and one-party rule of the city leading to its terrible
social stratification, and instead deciding to blame techies for not inventing
more comfortable park benches for the victims of those policies to sleep on.

------
scandox
\- "...and robots love money"

30 years of reading Science Fiction and I never thought I'd hear those
words...

~~~
idlewords
You need to watch more Futurama.

------
6stringmerc
Read the text, and find it rather troublesome that the author is constrained
to thinking of advertising and invasions of privacy as such a new phenomenon.
Yes, I get that it has advanced significantly. New players, etc.

However, I did a CTRL+F of both the article and these comments and don't see
one mention of Acxiom.

The social pressure comparison to tobacco might be workable, but until there's
significant "sin taxes" put on web ads, I don't think there's quite the same
motivation for change.

------
richmarr
Really interesting, thanks for sharing.

I guess my reluctance to raise any hopes here is caused by two things;

a) Unless I'm missing a trick this is a legislative issue, and fighting for
privacy isn't on the political agenda (except maybe in Iceland because those
folks are phenomenal). What's more, until the ERMAGHERD TERRRRRSM narrative
changes it won't get a look in, and even then you'd need to get enough people
interested in privacy to make it a fair fight against all the lobby groups
who'd want to shut you down.

b) Some of these proposals seem overly privacy-centric to me, which I guess is
fair in the early stages of an idea, but it makes me worry that it won't be
taken any further. The example that comes to my mind is limiting behavioural
data to 90 days. Some insights from behavioural data might take a year or more
to come to light. While as a consumer I might shrug at 90 days, as someone
trying to understand how people use new types of products I personally would
push back against that as being unreasonable (and a hinderance to
innnovation).

------
vdnkh
Advertisers will get their wish (crawlerbots don't have a pulse) when wearable
tech becomes more mainstream. A quote from _The Diamond Age_ by Neal
Stephenson:

 _You could get a phantascopic system planted directly on your retinas, just
as Bud 's sound system lived on his eardrums. You could even get telæsthetics
patched into your spinal column at various key vertebrae. But this was said to
have its drawbacks: some concerns about long-term nerve damage, plus it was
rumored that hackers for big media companies had figured out a way to get
through the defenses that were built into such systems, and run junk
advertisements in your peripheral vision (or even spang in the fucking middle)
all the time—even when your eyes were closed. Bud knew a guy like that who'd
somehow gotten infected with a meme that ran advertisements for roach motels,
in Hindi, superimposed on the bottom right-hand corner of his visual field,
twenty-four hours a day, until the guy whacked himself_

------
lifeisstillgood
Brilliant - I am starting to draft the regulations as a test of the viability
(please see [http://blog.paul-Brian.com](http://blog.paul-Brian.com)) but the
one I really want to try is the GPL version of privacy law.

"You can have my data if these conditions apply".

Love it

------
hoprocker
This will probably get me hellbanned here, but here's a bit of gold:

"The companies that come out of [venture capital funding] are no longer
pursuing profit, or even revenue. Instead, the measure of their success is
valuation—how much money they've convinced people to tell them they're worth."

I yearn now for a modern day Ambrose Bierce to write up something clever and
cutting, with entries like:

_valuation_: how much money you've convinced people to tell you you're worth

~~~
unimpressive
>This will probably get me hellbanned here, but here's a bit of gold:

Oh can we _please_ not start adding this bit of meta to our posts? It's in the
same category as "I know I'm going to be downvoted..."

------
JacobJans
> The losers are small publishers and small advertisers. Universal click fraud
> drives down the value of all advertising, making it harder for niche
> publishers to make ends meet.

This is absolutely not true in my case. I'm both a small publisher and a small
advertiser. I have absolutely no trouble making ends meet. Perhaps I will in
the future, but it is very unlikely that click fraud or or privacy concerns
will be to blame.

~~~
look_lookatme
How many people do you employ and/or pay livable wages to produce content?

~~~
JacobJans
I work with around a dozen freelance writers regularly. I usually aim to set
the pay so they'll earn a minimum of $25 an hour. Although, they're
freelancers, so that really isn't up to me. I just accepted a piece for
publication -- and I'm fairly certain the writer spent no more than 30 minutes
on it. The call for submissions went out, and 30 minutes later I got the
piece. I'm paying $65 for it.

In general, I'm always looking for ways to justify spending _more_ money on
producing _better_ content. I work hard to build the trust of my audience and
to provide ever increasing value to them. Fortunately, as my business grows,
this becomes easier in some ways, due to economy of scale. A bigger audience
generates more revenue, which means I can spend more on content. Better
content means more readership, which in turn increases revenue. It's a
gratifying business. :)

------
dexterdog
"Apple alone has nearly $200 billion in cash that is doing nothing."

Um, I assume they have it invested in some manner.

~~~
mizzao
According to [http://www.cheatsheet.com/features/how-does-apple-invest-
its...](http://www.cheatsheet.com/features/how-does-apple-invest-its-massive-
cash-hoard.html/?a=viewall):

Cash, money market instruments, and other types of fixed income. Basically
lots of things that can be turned into cash quickly without much volatility in
their price.

~~~
dexterdog
But it's still invested in the sense that somebody is leveraging it.

------
ised
"When it bursts companies are going to be more desperate and will unload all
the personal data they have... to any willing buyer."

I have long predicted this outcome and always thought I was being a bit too
realistic. It's nice to see someone else making the same forecast.

Of course, only time will tell.

~~~
Phlarp
Insurance companies essentially already do unload what data they have about
you to any willing buyer.

Doubtful many folks will stop buying insurance due to this fact.

~~~
ised
I am not sure I understand the comparison. Search engines and adtech are not
selling a product, other than the process of serving ads. If sales of ad space
and adtech decline, these companies are in trouble. And their "assets" are
mainly personal data.

Maybe I missed what you were trying to say.

------
RUG3Y
This is the best story I've seen on HN in a long time. I wish I could upvote
again.

I'm also totally onboard with a new, anarchistic alternative to the internet.
I think about this idea all the time, but I don't have anywhere close to the
knowledge needed to start figuring it out.

------
thuruv
But the point I made with the story is what the end user has in his hands.
Although a handful of website owners can change their own perspective to use
valid ads in their own house but for the end user. .? Should be made with some
better solutions for the end user.

------
LastMuel
This was a great piece.

It's a bit surprising to me that the page includes a Google Analytics tracker.

------
roboben
put captchas in front of ads.

~~~
yep__
[https://recaptcha.sucks/](https://recaptcha.sucks/)

~~~
roboben
i didnt say recaptcha

------
spectrum1234
Man that article started out so good and then got so bad. Really unfortunate
that someone so passionate is just another idiot.

------
x4m
Just laught a bit on Red Flag. I'm from Russia (: Kind of "been there, done
that"... Jolly Roger FTW

~~~
keyme
And the guy says he's Polish.

I guess we're at a point now where todays 25 year-olds have never seen what
socialism can deteriorate into.

~~~
kasey_junk
I don't want to speak for him but from his other writing I think idlewords has
a fair idea (from personal experience) of what old fashioned central planning
communism looks like.

For the record, there are lots of places on the socialism spectrum and many of
them haven't deteriorated at all, and some of them look quite lovely...

~~~
x4m
I do not mind central planing. I like Soviet culture far more than Hollywood
and CocaCola. I even can see myself a soviet soldier ready to defend homeland.

I just do not want to bring a Red Flag to evey corner of the world on a
bayonet of my rifle. And that's it. Even if I bring free cookies and right to
privacy with it.

There is no "socialism in one dedicated country". Socialism needs whole
planet. Lenin said that pretty clear.

------
crimsonalucard
The greatest defence of your privacy is the sheer volume of people on this
earth.

------
gadders
The big difference between VCs and state central planners is that VCs are
voluntarily given the money that they use. In Poland it was taken under threat
of force.

And the homeless problem in San Francisco, and the other problems it faces,
are mostly due to poor governance rather than Facebook or Google.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
If you own a real or near monopoly on a service that I must use for work,
school, my health, etc I'm not fucking voluntarily giving you money. There's
this misconception in capitalism that everything is optional - just don't buy
it if you don't like it. Its wrong. I buy a lot of things I prefer not to from
companies that sicken me, but I have no choice in the matter. There's no green
or ethical tablet or green or ethical car, for example.

