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It's a 14 year old kid. He wasn't demonstrating anything.

He took apart a clock, stuck in back in a different case, wanted to show his teacher that in a, I am guessing : "Hey look, I took all this apart, and managed not to destroy it"..

Honestly, this entire event shows me two things:

1. The jumps people make to crazy assumptions when faced with someone they don't like because of ideological reasons.

2. The low level of technological acumen/knowledge to assume that this is even similar to a dangerous device.


This, a hundred times this, I used to do this quite often since I was 5-6 years old with all the hardware that I was tired of using (games, toys, etc...)

Usually via a Pager app these days, not a physical device.


> gathering feedback from our first users. If you’re interested, you can try it here: https://ravenapp.ai

doesn't seem like I can try it. There's a screen that pops up saying I need to make an account.


The account creation process is free and takes just a few seconds. If you use Google to log in, you can access Raven immediately. For email sign-ups, you’ll receive a login link right away and it's just an extra click.

Nevertheless, I understand your point. We agree that having the option to try the app without creating an account would be ideal, and it's in our roadmap.


You don’t need to go that far, but I currently have no information at all about what your app looks like and if it’s useful to me at all. I would imagine you‘ll get a lot more sign ups with a better landing page that demos the app a little.


Fair enough, I thought the description here would be useful for that. I'll keep this in mind. Thank you!


> The account creation process is free and takes just a few seconds. If you use Google to log in, you can access Raven immediately. For email sign-ups, you’ll receive a login link right away and it's just an extra click.

The average user leave web pages in 10-20 seconds unless you provide a clear value proposition to hold their attention.

I can make a account, and I can give you my email ... But why should I? What exactly even is Raven? The webpage tells me nothing, yet you think I am going to give over my email information (and name etc that's pulled from Google OAuth) ... for what again?

> We agree that having the option to try the app without creating an account would be ideal, and it's in our roadmap.

Not even that. Make a landing page. Stick a few screenshots on it, make a loom video. Anything that shows me what I am even signing up to.

More so, you're targeting developers, on HN. That's a more privacy focused crowd. No Privacy Policy. No contact information. No proof that my data won't be sold to some random company is not a great way to gain trust.


Makes sense. Thanks for the feedback!

We do have a landing page, although I thought people would roughly see if the app is interesting to them by the post itself. https://www.ravenotes.com/


There's your feedback then:

People generally don't blindly sign up for apps which expose exactly nothing about themselves or their privacy policies


True that. Thank you!


> blunt instrument like this is likely to kill off sponsorships as a whole

That's the dream. Ads are a poison and a blight.

Removing them is something many users, including me welcome. If one wants money for their videos, they're welcome to actually allow getting payments i.e. patreon, the "Youtube sponsorship"-thing.


It greatly depends on the audience, but for many cases, unfortunately, it's more likely the case that you are dreaming.

Typical income flows for streamers include:

1. Passive advertising from video and stream platforms (which many adblockers do block)

2. Active advertising via sponsorships (which SponsorBlock wants to block)

3. Live stream donations

4. Video/stream-independent donations, most usually via Patreon

5. Paid "premium" or behind-the-scene programmes (partly overlaps with video/stream-independent donations due to their obvious weaknesses)

6. Merchandises

And not all streamers can do them at once. Live stream donations only work for some genres of streaming and it is easy to stress audiences. Usual donations may or may not work, but it is usually thought to be weaker than live stream donations due to its passiveness (unless you come up with very different perks, but then your income is completely independent from streaming).

Many high-profile channels rely greatly on merchandises because it does have significant margins if you can keep launching enough of them, but they are especially risky when your channel and/or stream is not large enough. So smaller channels have traditionally relied on passive advertising, but its flaws are well known and discussed to the death by now. (If you need a list though, higher processing fees, prevalence of adblocking, generally too low income to be sustainable, extreme platform dependence etc.) This leaves active advertising as a compelling option for smaller streamers, at least for now.

While I do loathe most kind of advertising, active advertising like this is something I can (barely) tolerate because it is meant to be performed by streamers themselves, unlike passive advertising which rarely relates to the streamer or content itself. And I'm afraid that there doesn't seem to be any other viable option remaining. I can always skip an ad portion of a video if I do find it annoying anyway.


If blocking ads means for-profit video creators go out of business then so be it. There will always be those who do it because it is something they enjoy and usually that kind of content is more worthwhile anyway.


You are free to do so, but your claim won't work for most of my favorite creators and streamers. Thank you.


Sure, I totally get that. I’m no fan of being advertised to myself and as a premium subscriber I do find sponsor segments - especially poorly-places ones - just as annoying as everyone else when watching YouTube - which is why I said I was conflicted in my earlier comment.

However as I mentioned in another reply in this thread, removing routes to monetisation and devaluing content in general (by making it be effectively a loss-leader for value-add sponsorships or memberships) will only have the effect of making YouTube non-viable for many, and especially those who necessarily have higher production values to make better quality (I’m thinking more thoroughly-researched, more interesting, that sort of thing) content.


Making YouTube non-viable is the entire point. Google should not be the gatekeeper for the world's content, or get to decide who wins and loses in a rat race trying to keep up with algorithms built to keep users addicted to low quality advertizer friendly content.

The end game of ad blocking tech is to make ads a non viable source of revenue so creators will move on to ethical platforms like LBRY or peertube where creators are in charge again and users can pay them directly with no corrupt middle-men .

I would suggest being an early adopter on alternative platforms building a direct relationship with a more independent donation-motivated audience before everyone else does.


These are platforms with worse availability and worse affordances, ranging to nonfunctional once you're on a mobile device. Adblocking technology isn't going to make them better. Making them better is going to make them better, but the unit economics remain not in their favor.

A more likely future is less video rather than people move to PeerTube and shake an upturned hat for donations. Which doesn't bother me much, but is likely to invoke the FAFO gator on a lot of folks.


> A more likely future is less video

I would say less big budget video. If we're being honest, YouTube is essentially television at this point. Many YouTube views, maybe even most, don't go towards individual creators. They go to Studios and the Jimmy Kimmel's of the world.

If someone like boxxy is making videos with a potato cam on her bedroom floor, I don't think she necessarily cares much about the monetization.

That USED to be the entire draw and appeal of YouTube. Then monetization came and surprise! The platform changed to be more monetizable, i.e. watered down and corporate.


The problem is that "cheap video" still costs a lot of money to ship to consumers. Things like PeerTube get around this by just doing a bad job of it, but if you want things like traffic steering and adaptive bitrate (and you do, because if you don't have these things, you will annoy the audience and they will leave), you are going to Pay The Money.


> A more likely future is less video

You mean I could get a f...ing text again about things, which I could just read at my own speed, skip back and forth by just moving my eyes, use the search function, skip pieces of it, etc etc, in just two minutes instead of ten minutes watching a video clip for the most trivial statements?

What a baaad world that would be...


The videos aren't going to be replaced with text, they're going to be replaced with nothing. Text died because it is too hard to get paid for, banner ads paid peanuts to begin with and are now trivial to block. Video ads paid really well which is why people started making video content, if video ads also die, then there is simply going to be no content.


There's going to be less content, which will likely still be more than enough content.


>You mean I could get a f...ing text again about things

Tone aside, we already do that... it's also monetized and being AI-slopified as we speak. Much faster than video.

in this scenario where videos become non-viable, people would ujst paywall their text like many journalists have resorted to. There's no free lunch these days.


Exactly that. But surprisingly, although I'd consider it as a trivial insight, we're living in a world that just doesn't want to understand that.

And while YT is a lot about casual nonsense, there are other big tech walled gardens, where content fights against some corporate-controlled algorithms, but the content is our entire public discourse nowadays. :( And people still do not want to understand what a terribly bad idea that is...


I'm not trying to be offensive or hostile but, as much as I value the higher-quality content on youtube, if youtube went back to being just a place people posted videos of themselves doing stuff instead of what effectively amounts to studios making youtube content, I'd consider that a win.

Again, not that your content isn't likely appreciated by your audience and valuable. I just miss the days of youtube just being a fun video platform instead of another TV channel.


> I just miss the days of youtube just being a fun video platform instead of another TV channel.

It's another effect of the economy. Programmers are traditionally well compensated, so they can use their free time literally giving away knowledge for others. Because they don't need to monetize that knowledge to survive.

Video editing: not so much. If you want more people just having fun you need some part of the economy making sure they pay rent. Hence, hustle culture. It'd still exist if everyone was comfy, but many people would instead focus on leisure over minmaxing money.


D'accord


Aren’t you, as a YouTuber, in the same position as many creators that do the same on other mediums? There are people out there who write amazing blog posts but now the traditional advertising world is basically dead and people have to figure out other ways to make it work.

Or they have to accept that what they do is not a full time job but rather a hobby and they need to find other ways to earn a living.

Writing is no longer viable for many. I don’t see why YouTube should be this special case.


>Writing is no longer viable for many. I don’t see why YouTube should be this special case.

>Writing is no longer viable for many. I don’t see why YouTube should be this special case.

because Youtube is owned by a trillion dollar corporation but mostly powered by content creators. Substack isn't.

It's really that simple. most wringing isn't viable because there's no money in it, literally. There still is money in video ads.


I’m not asking why it is. I’m asking why it should be.


Why what should be? Why platforms with money pay people with no money? Why platforms with no money shut down?

It's not a very fun answer. Google gets a lot of ads to pay then to shove ads down the consumer's throats, and they can do this with no risk of users migrating. They "should" get more money because they more effectly do this than news websites, which have failed to appeal to advertisers effectively enough.

I don't really know what to do with that answer, though. Accept I'm the minority that will subscribe to paid avenues to support creators (or even care about other creator's well beings?) and move on?


No I’m asking why we should look at people who make video on YouTube differently than any other type of creator who publish elsewhere.

The original post I was replying to said:

> However as I mentioned in another reply in this thread, removing routes to monetisation and devaluing content in general (by making it be effectively a loss-leader for value-add sponsorships or memberships) will only have the effect of making YouTube non-viable for many, and especially those who necessarily have higher production values to make better quality (I’m thinking more thoroughly-researched, more interesting, that sort of thing) content.

And my answer was that this is no different than any other type of creator online.


> I’m asking why we should look at people who make video on YouTube differently than any other type of creator who publish elsewhere.

I don't know who's "we" here. But that's simply psychological. You will look at [person who make lots of money] differently from [person who can barely cover rent], if only because the latter may need more help you may be able to give.

There's no "should" here. And influencers aren't limited to YouTube. all my answers come down to "because they are backed by a trillion dollar corporation"

>And my answer was that this is no different than any other type of creator online.

Maybe instead of "but no one else makes money" to drag down, we should change the lens to "let's reward other mediums for being high quality and throrougly researched" to boost up other mediums of creation.

Especially in a time where we are already getting so much slop and misinformation (and we're not even close to the worst of the storm). I'm sure you seen enough of the internet to know most people will just accept the slop and at best take years of introspection before they realize why quality matters (others never do).


Assuming when you say thoroughly researched, you're looking for high quality educational information, the highest quality videos are generally from a camera pointed at a blackboard/whiteboard recording a lecture that an expert was already going to give. Not a lot of production value necessary.


And I'll agree with you the day we all decide to pay a monthly fee that is big enough to support various websites and creators.


Why? As a HN-er/content creator, I don't see why it would be taken for granted that people need to be paid for their hobbies. In fact many people post online for enjoyment.


I’m sort of amazed this has to be explicitly stated:

Because most YouTube creators (even the hobbyists) are at least partially motivated by money, and if you take away all the money they will likely make less content or stop altogether. I understand that it’s fun to get things for free, but that’s usually not sustainable.


The point is that's fine, and it is perfectly sustainable for people to do things they enjoy for free. It'd perhaps not be sustainable for someone to play video games as a full-time job, but maybe that's okay (or even desirable from a societal resource allocation standpoint)?


Simply make rent, housing, and food free. Then people need not make money for the majority of needs.


Indeed:

https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/what-is-gen-zs-no...

> According to a recent report by decision intelligence company Morning Consult, which surveyed over 2,000 adults in the U.S., 57% of Gen Zers said they'd be an influencer if given the opportunity, compared to 41% of adults from all age groups.

If true, possibly the most damning rebuttal of UBI proponents that there is.


I don't see how. They are young adults and of course they want to be [flashy job]. Some may do it out of passion, some will inevitably realize the platform exploits them and moves on so they can have stability, or pay rent. Trust me, I'm a game dev, the 2000's version of this, succeeded by the band musicians of the 90's/80's.

UBI would bring out more passionate people and not force the passionate but disheartened to drop out. meanwhile, the passionate who do stick it will optimize for money. So they can pay rent. Or worse, the unpassionate marketers take over and the discipline is reduced to slop (we've probably been here for ~10 years now).


Because they're saying if they could sustain themselves, they'd have their job be to... eat at restaurants, play video games, travel, try on clothes, wear makeup, etc. Basically be an exact conservative caricature of socialists.


The irony is that its a caricature of rich nepo babies under consumer capitalism vs socialism. In a pure socialist society (good example of this is US government or military jobs) you still work and there wouldn’t be such striking wealth inequality on display.


Having previously worked for the US government and knowing multiple people in the US military, there's both significant wealth inequality, and significant downgrades in quality of life compared to the private industry.


Sure, but then you're either not providing UBI (e.g. it is conditioned on working), or requiring forced labor so actual jobs are still done.


Jobs can still pay on top of ubi which would be enough incentive to hold them. You may as well ask why any navy cook would strive to be general when peeling potatos is less stress. The answer is also higher pay.


> A majority (53%) of Gen Zers surveyed considered influencing a respectable career choice, and a similar percentage would be willing to leave their current jobs if they could sustain their lifestyle as an influencer.

There's some wiggle-room on what "their lifestyle" means, but I doubt that the positive answer is biased toward e.g. HENRYs, and in fact it's likely biased in the other direction. If UBI can match whatever their current lifestyle is (or even exceed it, e.g. paying for a personal living space instead of roommates), then these people are essentially saying that they'd be happy not to work.


Less content frequently better content. Hobby as content job may just not be sustainable in another form. Tons of hobbyist creators jumped on the full time content mill job and burn out. Maybe in another world they have their hobby on the side and put out 1/10th content slowly, without the incentive to make filler to keep bills paid. TBH sometimes when work and passion mix, passion takes a back seat. It would be different if youtube algo doesn't incentivize this type of content milling, but it does.


I think that's fine, though. Maybe we should have different platforms. Maybe we have a platform just for people who post stuff out of love for their craft, and don't expect any sort of compensation. And then we have a platform for people who want to monetize, and the platform itself has a subscription fee that gets distributed to creators based on views, or... something. Anything, really.

Maybe this could all be YouTube, but creators decide on a per-video basis whether they're uploading publicly or only to paid viewers. I dunno, there are so many other models.

The current situation with YouTubers asking people to subscribe to their Patreon or whatever is so weird, since often they have to distribute patron perks outside of YouTube, or via unlisted links, or whatever. I assume Google hasn't built in paid subscriptions option for fear of anti-trust regulation, but an integrated solution like that would likely be better for both creators and viewers.


> Maybe we should have different platforms. Maybe we have a platform just for people who post stuff out of love for their craft, and don't expect any sort of compensation

There are plenty of alternative video hosting sites if you seek that. So, why are you still on Youtube?

>but creators decide on a per-video basis whether they're uploading publicly or only to paid viewers. I dunno, there are so many other models.

Sure, works for Onlyfans. they even blend in both subscriptions AND PPV behind the sub. And we know how quality that content is (no offense to the models there. but come on, I've seen $100 for 2 pictures, behind a $20/month subscription. You're not 2000's Brittany Spears).

> I assume Google hasn't built in paid subscriptions option for fear of anti-trust regulation

They do. CC's can enable Memberships and upload videos specific to that.

The issue is that

1. the memberships are small for many right now. Conseuqnces of being late to the party.

2. what's offered isn't necessarily going to be even higher quality than a public video.

3. ad rev from non-subbed views is still signifigant. Making a paid subscription for certain videos can mean brining in less money.

4. That lower view count affects your algorithm for growing.

It's complex. And sadly, outside of the OF model most people simply don't want to pay for content. They get bored and they move to Tiktok and that's the real endgame should YT fall.


They do have that functionality[0]. The elephant in the room to me when discussing these things is that people aren't wrong when they won't pay for most "content". The overwhelming majority of it brainless filler-noise that a lot of people probably only look at because they don't know what else to do with their time. If actually pressed to come up with how much they'd pay for it, they correctly come up with $0 as the answer. Unfortunately, they don't then figure that it's not worth their attention either.

[0] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7636690


If they want to make money, they are totally free to have a website hosting their content behind a paywall.

Than I can decide if their content is worth money to me (let me tell you: in 999 out of 1000 "creators" it isn't).

But I already pay for a few select content creators. And happily shell out more than I would pay YT for an adfree experience.


Spoilers: the 1 out of 1000's won't get your money either because of any number of arbitrary reasons unrelated to their craft that is conjured up.

- Slow website/video host? Great now they need to pay for a better host or pay a web dev to optimize their site.

- Not responive? now that dev/service needs more money.

- pay is too much (meanwhile they still can't even make minimum wage)? Well, their fault for valuing themselves over a McDonalds' employee

- they pivot to premium teaching and now are a "scam"? Why am I here, I can google and learn this for free on Youtube

You can't win with some people.


They receive my money, as I pay them the way they ask for it.

I am actually not responsible for their choices of how they spend it.

Everybody has to invest something to deliver their craft. A handyman needs tools and materials. A carpenter as well. They pay taxes. And so on. That’s the reality of doing business. If they are not business savvy enough to turn a profit. Not my responsibility.

That’s called free market capitalism by the way. Everybody is free to try to make money on their terms in any given environment. But nobody is entitled to actually make money. That’s how the market actually acts as an agent for economic and business evolution. Not the worst thing there is, given how well real existing socialism worked. I grew up next to the GDR. I know how "strong" their economy was. How successful their companies were.

Other aspects, like creating a social net to mitigate the worst effects of capitalism on the people is a topic for a different thread imho, though.


If you're a HN-er you should know the culture of HN is very old school and fringe mentality. E.g:

- Flip phones are celebrated in some threads because people don't want smart phones (extreme minority in real life)

- Disabling JS and pushing sites to go back to just raw HTML CSS (with some even not understanding why we need JS, extreme minority irl. IRL site owners care about attracting customers and the things they want to do can't be done with raw HTML CSS much of the time)

- Kagi taking off. IRL most people still do and will continue to Google

- People acting like if ads were disabled forever the population would totally pay for things they like (IRL people don't, there's a reason piracy is big. People want the things they want for the cheapest cost possible)

HN is a very specific type of tech-centric bubble


>IRL people don't, there's a reason piracy is big.

It is? That's not my observation. In fact, music piracy seems to be all but dead, thanks to the streaming services. Movie piracy is not, and seems to be increasing (hard to say though), because of people getting frustrated with the fragmentation of streaming; back in Netflix's heyday, it seemed like movie piracy was much smaller, because you could just pay $7/month to Netflix and watch whatever you wanted.

>People want the things they want for the cheapest cost possible

No, most people want convenience. That's why music piracy is basically dead. Piracy is usually a PITA, and it's easy to subscribe to Spotify or Apple Music and listen to everything you want. Piracy is usually a service problem, not an economics problem.


> Movie piracy is not, and seems to be increasing (hard to say though), because of people getting frustrated with the fragmentation of streaming

I feel that proves the point. When everything is all together for $20 people don't mind. when it's spread out, people are too lazy to sub/unsub to other $20 services as needed to watch content on demand. Someone that's a heavy enough power user to watch that much TV shouldn't mind paying $100+ to keep up. Premium cable was way more expensive and restrictive back in the day.

Meanwhile, all that conversation and none of these streaming services are even profitable. Because giving all your content away for rent isn't financially viable. But it's still too much for lazy consumers. So the entire thing collapses.

>No, most people want convenience. That's why music piracy is basically dead.

It's also why people completely raged when Netflix and GamePass increased prices. There definitely is a breaking point for many (past the ones who complain about every price hike on the internet but stay subscribed).

>Piracy is usually a service problem

Everytime I hear this, I simply need to point to the mobile industry to prove it wrong (or maybe right? Just not the way people think is "fair"). They fixed piracy by doing the classic Web dev action: Keep everything valuable on your server. The APK you pirate is worthless, as it is simply a thin client into their actual value.

We know how the rest ends from there.


>I feel that proves the point. When everything is all together for $20 people don't mind.

I think this proves my point, that it's a service problem. Put everything together in a single, easy-to-use service for a low price (like Netflix in 2012), and only the true die-hards will still bother with piracy. Ask them to subscribe to a whole bunch of services (with a high total cost) or try to figure out how to save money by strategically subscribing and unsubscribing to see the stuff they want, and have to deal with shows suddenly disappearing or moving to a competing service when they're half-finished watching them, and many will simply go back to torrenting because it's honestly easier than all that BS. But instead you think people are "lazy"... A lazy person doesn't do torrenting; it's really not that easy.

>Premium cable was way more expensive and restrictive back in the day.

Back then, 1) there weren't many alternatives. At the beginning of cable TV's reign, videotapes weren't even commonly available. And 2) back then, people had more disposable income because the cost-of-living was much, much lower (particularly housing). Technology is much better now too, so people expect to pay less.

>Meanwhile, all that conversation and none of these streaming services are even profitable.

Citation needed. Last I checked, Netflix is doing quite well, and even better after cracking down on the password-sharing.

>It's also why people completely raged when Netflix and GamePass increased prices.

Some people raged, but Netflix's subscriber count has increased and profits are up, so obviously those people either got over it, or were a small minority.


in all fairness, I'm sure Kagi is aware it's serving a niche right now. It's more a matter if that niche (maybe a few thousand consistent subscibers?) can support their infrastructure. You don't need to compete with Google to make a good living.


I wouldn't pay real money other than my YT Premium, so I'm fine with sponsor reads. I'm not alone.


As I understand it YouTube Premium viewers result in significantly more revenue than ad based viewers do [1] but represent a tiny fraction of viewers [2] and can't be targeted separately. I.e. if most people were willing to pay in just one way, even if that were just YouTube Premium, then there wouldn't be such a strong incentive for channels to rely on sponsored segments but most people prefer not paying anything and dealing with ads and/or sponsored segments instead leaving those that do a bit stuck with the latter.

[1] Just one example https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubegaming/comments/p1qmgu/conte... [2] https://backlinko.com/youtube-users


I would buy premium in a heartbeat if it actually filtered out all ads and sponsored content. Not just the segment, the entire video should be cut if its creation was influenced by “impressions” or what ever filler content is measured in.

The current deal gives me no value, it just distributes more money to promote quantity crap over quality.

Someone needs to figures out how to take my money and distribute them to people working on actually valuable stuff.


>Someone needs to figures out how to take my money and distribute them to people working on actually valuable stuff.

why do you need a financial advisor to donate to Patreon or even Youtube memberships now? The models are about as easy to (un)subscribe from as you can get, while allowing granular control.

Do you really want some "index fund" where you trust someone else to use your money to fund "good creators"? That sounds like a capitalist's wet dreams. And a consumer hellscape.


>Do you really want some "index fund" where you trust someone else to use your money to fund "good creators"? That sounds like a capitalist's wet dreams. And a consumer hellscape.

Yes, I have a limited amount of time so I use curators (or algorithms) to narrow down what I might most like. For example, people used to pay HBO and other TV networks, or these days, Apple/Netflix/Amazon/Disney/etc.


Yeah I have premium and TBH expect creators over XYZ size to spend a few minutes to timestamp/chapter their sponsorships and youtube to enable autoskipping. Or have youtube crawl through transcripts and figure it out.

The problem is the people willing to pay for premium likely much more valuable customers for sponsorships to target.


Direct payment is good, but Patreon-type models are unfair (for both consumers and creators), inefficient (in terms of both time and money spent by consumers), and unscalable (to anything but a tiny fraction of the economy).

We need direct microtransactions on the per-video/content-item level.


Far more men like women with good-looking fit bodies. It's a statistically insignificant minority that likes "fat women", so "men" overall aren't policing women's bodies to the point of influencing women to not go to the gym. It's largely women who do it to each other.


>It’s a statistically insignificant minority that likes “far women”

Well, I’m not sure if that’s true, many men like “curvy” women, but generally even they are regularly working out. It would be more accurate to say that men dislike unhealthy women. But then you could say the same thing about men.


It helps reinforce my overall belief, that people smart in some aspects of life, might be very un-smart/crazy/bigoted/ignorant etc in other parts of life.

I mean, look at the website, 7/10 of the "Recently Updated" are about religion, while most are about Islam. A religion that he categorically denies and thinks is false, yet is seemingly obsessed with? Strange stuff to me.


everyone is the same, just a different flavor :). (in otger words> i agree :D).

am a muslim, but totally enjoy his videos. we all carry our weird conditions with us as a burden, its ok. he does so much nice and good outside of that :)


It's been a few years since I last watched his stuff. He always had that crazy genius vibe, similar to Terry Davis but but not as unhinged and much more friendly and wholesome. I'm fascinated how these individuals that are clearly immensely gifted with rational thought are also religious fanatics. How do they rationalize it? I can understand believing in a supreme being but it also being the one described in bible seems difficult to rationalize.


If you're a schizo, it's probably pretty easy to rationalize: you've heard your god talk to you and tell you these things. It's easy to go "You're obviously crazy, this can't have happened!" from the outside looking in, but it's far harder to reject your own experiences out of hand as obviously false.

Doubly so because the types of experiences you get tend to be very hard to disprove. It's usually not something like "There's a yellow demonic entity running around deep in the valley by the mountain" where it's something that can be checked and explained, like actually just a moose who got tangled up in a yellow wintercoat or something, and is running around irritated trying to get it off. Rather it tends to be more "God is speaking to me through my mind, and only does so to special people" or "These people are trying to make me be as miserable as I was before I found God by making me reject him, they must be servants of Satan".

Really, if anything, I would say gifted people are probably way more likely to become religious fanatics if they have these experience. We do not have a good explanation for these things (you're sick in the head, something something dopamine does not work too well for otherwise perfectly functional and rational people), and the explanations that we do have must more or less be taken on faith. You need to trust that the person explaining these things to you is both more capable of judging the situation than you are, and has your best interests in mind. For most gifted people, the chance of both of these being true in any particular situation is abyssmally small.

This applies even more so in mental healthcare, where we're practically at the same stage of technological advancement as we were when trepanation and bloodletting were state of the art in physical medicine. We have a long way to go before we can truly make the "You're crazy!" explanation stick for those who are used to living in a world that is inevitably wrong about most things, whether subtly or overtly. Really, if you're used to being the smartest guy in the room, what choice do you have? What choice do you have but to trust yourself? Yes, you might be delusional and wrong, but you know the world at large is delusional and wrong on countless subjects as well. Why trust them more than you trust yourself, when just about every single experience you've had in life has fed into your belief that you are fundamentally better at judging reality than most people are?


The issue is when "free speech absolutists" often aren't actually that. They'll stand up to defend folks like the ones from the case you cited because "Free Speech". Yet, they'll also defend laws like the ones passed earlier in the year by the US House about codifying the IHRA's definition of anti-Semitism.

> spectrum

The spectrum is far too often simply colored by the politics one's interested in, i.e. Free Speech is simply a tool to attack another and provide justification for their own opinions. Not an actual Free Speech position.

I don't believe anyone truly has a Free Speech Absolutist position. It's always just a tool. When the speech is against you, everyone conveniently turns against it.


>they'll also defend laws like the ones passed earlier in the year by the US House about codifying the IHRA's definition of anti-Semitism.

Anyone who defended that isn't even close to a free-speech absolutist.

>I don't believe anyone truly has a Free Speech Absolutist position

I do. It's what makes America great. Erosions like that jewish law are slowly weakening that.

You should be allowed to say whatever you want about White people, straight people, men, Christians, etc. and I should be able to say whatever I want about jews.

You just don't want to acknowledge such a stance is possible because the people you agree with are in power, allow the speech you agree with, and censor the speech you don't disagree with, so you stand with nothing to gain by supporting free speech. That's a personal choice to have no integrity.


Should I be able to make wild claims about my product to trick you into buying it? False claims about my buisness performance to pump the stock? Lies about your character? Your kids? made up stuff that whips up entire segments of your city to commit violence or vandalism against you?

Because absolute free speech is allowing all that without consequence


It seems to me that a truly free speech absolutist reply would be “yes” to all of the above.

But I submit that given our current state of affairs as a species, I don’t think we could handle that “yes”.

That “yes” coexisting in a harmonious world that is safe and sound would require that speech that incites violence or vandalism isn’t acted upon, for example. That the market could and would reliably be able to detect and counter deceitful manipulation. That somehow the market would be able to do the same with lies about a product or service.

It also suggests abdicating accountability for when such a seemingly perfect system would fail and result in harm.

These things seem implausible in our current reality. A lack of accountability seems undesirable generally and is already something that we suffer enough.


>Because absolute free speech is allowing all that without consequence

Freedom of speech is absolutely not about freedom from consequences. Where and how did you ever get that idea?

Free speech means you can say anything you want, some very specific caveats aside, and you can't be prosecuted simply for saying them. But that doesn't mean you won't have to answer for what happens as a consequence.

As an example: You absolutely can go and make wild claims about your product to try and sell it, nobody can stop you from doing that. You absolutely can make bogus claims about someone, nobody can stop you from doing that either. However, you will be prosecuted for making false statements and defamation respectively by the people you harmed. Note what is prosecuted here: The effects of the false and perhaps even sinister nature of the statement, not the statement itself.


Literal people on this site arguing that people should be free from consequences. Replies to my comment here saying “defamation shouldn’t exist Alex jones did nothing wrong”


He didn't. Sharing a conspiracy theory should not be illegal just because it makes people upset. Horrifyingly anti-American precedent


Honestly, pretending that that's all he was responsible for is far more anti-American.


That is all he did.


It was proved in a court of law that no. That’s not all he did.


It was all he did yes, that was the justification for the 1.5 billion dollar fine.


No it was not. Stop lying And making up facts like Alex jones did.


Yes. The free market would solve the first two, the next two aren't even crimes currently, and with the last the crime is the violence/vandalism not someone telling a fib.


“The free market would fix it” quite spiritually similar to “god will provide” or “prayer solves everything.”

Maybe, maybe with an unwieldy amount of time the rubes would all die out as they administer snake oil to themselves and their families, the pyramid schemes all collapse under the weight of their inability to produce the results their funders sought, and the collective, unorganized and ungovernmented multitudes publicly shame and criticize those industry leaders who conducted research into the effects of their products, but decided instead to make some shit up to sell more.

Maybe more likely: as the divine wisdom of the heavenly free market dictates, a few really good liars get a massive foothold and build empires on it. And maybe in the truest American free market fashion, these opportunities to profit from fraud are available to everyone! Even if you’re not clever enough to build an empire, you can at least move state to state, lying, selling more slow-burn poison, all the while with the cops backing you up when the mob forms, because fraud and the affects of lying are as protected as saying something ignorant or mean.


Poisoning people isn't speech. If I sell you a product that actually gives you cancer and say it doesn't, the crime shouldn't be that I lied, it should be that I gave you cancer.


Okay cool, so when it comes to using oil/gasoline as a fuel source should that be made non-free speech if I sell this despite the fact that there's clear evidence that it causes among other things cancer?

I don't say it doesn't I don't say it does.

And liable isn't a crime? What's then stopping people from calling each other pedophiles which in turn causes them to lose jobs/relationships/etc.

Should Alex Jones have been convicted of liable due to his claims surrounding Sandy hook?

I'm no free speech absolutist, as you'll end up eating your own tail, but I'm a 100% believer in free speech that does not legitimize malicious use (just because you lie about someone doesn't mean you will be prosecuted that if there were to be a law enacted then free speech won't protect said lie), such as no liable, no threat of violence, no willfully scamming/swindling and no abuse of authoritative/alertive speech (as in saying fire in a theater when there is no fire).


Metaphors dawg


Firstly, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation

Secondly, you're okay with someone inciting violence/vandalism/crimes, and people acting explicitly on that person's direction, as long as only the actual violence/vandalism/crime is punished?


Defamation shouldn't exist (see Alex Jones, that's an insane situation to be told to pay $1.5 BILLION for sharing an opinion) but the standards are generally higher than "someone told lies about my character" at least.

Yes. Everyone has agency, if I tell you to commit a crime it's up to you whether to do so.


Well I'm glad the vast majority of people don't agree with you and actually recognize there's nuance here.


The vast majority of people don't like being censored


> Should I be able to make wild claims about my product to trick you into buying it? False claims about my buisness performance to pump the stock?

If you also abolish the notion of intellectual property as well as trade secrets, both of which are severe limitations on free speech, then sure. Otherwise it's just another case of wanting free speech when it suits the company but wanting to restrict it when it doesn't.

> Lies about your character? Your kids? made up stuff that whips up entire segments of your city to commit violence or vandalism against you?

Sure, as long as the actual violence and vandalism is harshly punished to discourage people from acting on falsehoods. The speech was never the real problem here.


Problem is the damage is already done. You lost your job. Your kid committed suicide. The mod has murdered.

You can’t undo that, not to mention it not illegal to fire someone because if you read some false facts in the paper


Punishing someone for "bad" speech is also not going to prevent that.

Both approaches rely on punishment disincentivizing others from behaving in the same way. Except that "hate speech" laws are a bludgeon that a) can be easily circumvented by clever speech that is still going to encourage violence and b) is guaranteed to be used sooner or later as a pretense to silence dissidents whose speech would not result in violence. They are really only one tiny step removed from trying to combat thought crimes. Better to disincentivize the behavior that is actually a problem for society (i.e. violence) rather than something as vague and subjective as "hate speech" that may or may not lead to it.

> Not to mention it not illegal to fire someone because if you read some false facts in the paper

Some countries have strong worker protections that actually make it quite hard to fire someone without a good reason.


“Punishing someone for theft or murder isn’t going to prevent that”

Is basically the argument you’re making here. So I guess we shouldn’t have any punishment for any behaviour then eh?


You might try reading the rest of the comment.


> Anyone who defended that isn't even close to a free-speech absolutist.

No True Scotsman.

> You just don't want to acknowledge such a stance is possible because the people you agree with are in power, allow the speech you agree with, and censor the speech you don't disagree with, so you stand with nothing to gain by supporting free speech. That's a personal choice to have no integrity.

... I am not American, neither do I have anyone in power who supports the speech I agree with. There's no need to attack me specifically. I am talking about the wider pattern. Free Speech Absolutists exist as long as the speech they support is being oppressed. Do you support Free Speech of the person screaming obscenities at your young child? False claims about you? Whipping up entire communities to attack you physically? Do you support speech that incites genocide?

Yes, some of those are crimes but I am not sure you'd care if you'd been attacked already. The damage is done.


>No True Scotsman.

Nope. If you support laws that censor criticism of israel you are not a free speech supporter, let alone an absolutist. The term has a very clear definition and it's the opposite of what the antisemitism law entails.

>... I am not American, neither do I have anyone in power who supports the speech I agree with.

Did I say you were American? All of Europe and many parts of Asia are way worse when it comes to free speech.

>Do you support Free Speech of the person screaming obscenities at your young child? False claims about you? Whipping up entire communities to attack you physically?

Yes. If it's just words and not a direct threat it's fine.

Direct threats are a fine exception because they promise crossing over from words into physical action, at that point the NAP is violated if you want to look at it that way. No need to wait and see if they're actually going to follow through.

Aside from that I really don't see any need for further exceptions.


> >Do you support Free Speech of the person screaming obscenities at your young child? False claims about you? Whipping up entire communities to attack you physically? > > Yes. If it's just words and not a direct threat it's fine. > > Direct threats are a fine exception because they promise crossing over from words into physical action, at that point the NAP is violated if you want to look at it that way. No need to wait and see if they're actually going to follow through. > > Aside from that I really don't see any need for further exceptions.

I'd argue that someone who has effectively control over some kind of mob riling them up is quite a bit more threatening than a "direct threat" if they know that mob contains people that will (or even just are very likely to) commit violence as a result of it: instead of making one direct threat, they generate multiple (indirect and possibility silent) ones.


> We're already looking at pictures and videos of our kids on the phone a lot of the time anyway. Which required us to be holding our phones in hand while playing with our kids.

A phone in the hand is objectively far less intrusive than a full on mask on your eyes that prevents half of your face being seen by your kids.


As said by another commenter above [1], the iPhone 15 Pro can shoot spatial videos that can be viewed on Vision Pro. When the Vision Pro was announced, Apple was its typical self by not revealing anything about another future product (plus, the iPhone is its flagship, and Apple likes to keep the excitement coming from its actual announcement). Shooting spatial videos will be a standard feature on all iPhones in a couple of years. It will stay if the Vision product range continues to do well enough while Apple iterates and figures out the product positioning (Apple is generally good at these things). If it doesn’t work out well enough for Apple’s satisfaction, this will go the way of 3D Touch on some older iPhones. Nevertheless, the technology in it will continue to push its other products — existing and forthcoming, and vice versa.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39195946


> doesn't exercising mean you have to consume more calories

You can't exercise off calories. The difference in burning rate vs consumption is far too high for most cases.. I always thought the exercise that helped age better, was largely that the diet remains constant..


This is a myth, one I used to believe, until I started exercising to just improve my cardiovascular health. Lo and behold, I started losing fat unintentionally (my weight only dropped a little, but I think my body composition is better as well, so some muscle was gained).

My weight lifting doesn't burn many calories, but I typically burn 2000-3000 calories a week running. This is close enough to my basal metabolic rate that it is calorically equivalent to fasting one day per week. This is more exercise than is typical, granted, but it does suggest that one can exercise off calories and it doesn't take all that much time to make a dent.

I will say, this kind of caloric burn ups my appetite and I'm not trying to lose weight, so I eat more to compensate.


You can absolutely outrun your fork, you just have to run a lot farther than you think. There are no fat people who run 50 miles a week.

Some people hear "one mile burns roughly a soda", look at the numbers and assume that weight loss through exercise is not going to work for them or anyone. These people give up way too easy.


Consider the case of an individual who manages to have a stable body mass without training.

One would most certainly require more calories if he/her started training.


It -really- depends on what you're doing.

If you're an olympic athlete swimming 10 miles a day, you need more calories.

If you're the typical American walking or jogging even for an hour, you burn basically a can of Coke or two.


Unless you are exercising 10 hours per day you dont lose much calories by exercising


I ran 15 miles on Monday at a pretty relaxed pace (took 2.5 hours). My watch, while probably not perfectly accurate, nevertheless suggested I burned approximately 1640 additional calories during this time.

This is 1/4 as much as 10 hours and is a significant proportion of my basal metabolic expenditure.

On a more typical day, I may run closer to an hour and be closer to 600-700 calories. I'd still call this significant.

You can burn significant calories exercising, but the exercise is probably kind of unpleasant.


Good. What I mean is that it is a lot more effort than cutting down on an extra snack. Running a hour for 600 calories does not sound like its very effective since its just about the calories of 2 cookies.


> One would most certainly require more calories if he/her started training

Not necessarily. Consider the calories you're burning carrying around fat or being inflamed or from a higher resting heart rate.


> Don't switch to FF if you're a heavy user

I currently have over 250 tabs open, all actually open actively running things in the background, and I haven't closed my two Firefox windows in the last 6-7 months. I constantly run fairly heavy CPU-usage web apps and FF's not crashed in the last 6 months at least..

Let's not generalise your experience to the rest.. Like "It runs on my machine" isn't a valid statement usually, "It doesn't run on my machine" also mostly isn't.


(Firefox user here and I'm not planning on switching)

Your argument also works against yourself.


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