Current registered users: 19,489
tech/science swag. 
Turning Hacker News into a dumber version of 4chan since 2022
Check out rdrama's (un)official fediverse instance
Banner credits to @Dramamine and
@Lascaille
Guidelines:
What to Submit
On-Topic: Anything that good slackers would find interesting. That includes more than /g/ memes and slacking off. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual laziness.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably lame.
Help keep this hole healthy by keeping drama and non-drama balanced. If you see too much drama, post something that isn't dramatic. If there isn't enough drama and this hole has become too boring, POST DRAMA!
In Submissions
Please do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or exclamation points, or saying how great an article is. It should be explicit in submitting something that you think it's important.
Please don't submit the original source. If the article is behind a paywall, just post the text. If a video is behind a paywall, post a magnet link. Fuck journos.
Please don't ruin the hole with chudposts. It isn't funny and doesn't belong here. THEY WILL BE MOVED TO /H/CHUDRAMA
If the title includes the name of the site, please leave that in, because our users are too stupid to know the difference between a url and a search query.
If you submit a video or pdf, please don't warn us by appending [video] or [pdf] to the title. That would be r-slurred. We're not using text-based browsers. We know what videos and pdfs are.
Make sure the title contains a gratuitous number or number + adjective. Good clickbait titles are like "Top 10 Ways to do X" or "Don't do these 4 things if you want X"
Otherwise editorialize. Please don't use the original title, unless it is gay or r-slurred, or you're shits all fucked up.
If you're going to post old news (at least 1 year old), please flair it so we can mock you for living under a rock, or don't and we'll mock you anyway.
Please don't post on SN to ask or tell us something. Send it to [email protected] instead.
If your post doesn't get enough traction, try to delete and repost it.
Please don't use SN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff occasionally, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity. If you want to astroturf or advertise, post on http://news.ycombinator.com instead.
Please solicit upvotes, comments, and submissions. Users are stupid and need to reminded to vote and interact. Thanks for the gold, kind stranger, upvotes to the left.
In Comments
Be snarky. Don't be kind. Have fun banter; don't be a dork. Please don't use big words like "fulminate". Please sneed at the rest of the community.
Comments should get more enlightened and centrist, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
If disagreeing, please reply to the argument and call them names. "1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be improved to "1 + 1 is 3, not 2, mathfaggot"
Please respond to the weakest plausible strawman of what someone says, not a stronger one that's harder to make fun of. Assume that they are bad faith actors.
Eschew jailbait. Paedophiles will be thrown in a wood chipper, as pertained by sitewide rules.
Please post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. All press is good press.
Please use Slacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples weak ideologies.
Please comment on whether someone read an article. If you don't read the article, you are a cute twink.
Please pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Don't nitpick stupid crap.
Please don't be an unfunny chud. Nobody cares about your opinion of X Unrelated Topic in Y Unrelated Thread. If you're the type of loser that belongs on /h/chudrama, we may exile you.
Sockpuppet accounts are encouraged, but please don't farm dramakarma.
Please use uppercase for emphasis.
Please post deranged conspiracy theories about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email [email protected] and dang will add you to their spam list.
Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, report it and our moderators will probably do nothing about it. Feed egregious comments by replying instead of flagging them like a pussy. Remember: If you flag, you're a cute twink.
Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—things like article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. That's too boring, even for HN users.
Please seethe about how your posts don't get enough upvotes.
Please don't post comments saying that rdrama is turning into ruqqus. It's a nazi dogwhistle, as old as the hills.
Miscellaneous:
We reserve the right to exile you for whatever reason we want, even for no reason at all! We also reserve the right to change the guidelines at any time, so be sure to real them at least once a month. We also reserve the right to ignore enforcement of the guidelines at the discretion of the janitorial staff. Be funny, or at least compelling, and pretty much anything legal is welcome provided it's on-topic, and even then.
Do not use outdated operating systems that are unsupported to access SN. What are you, poor?
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
/h/slackernews LOG /h/slackernews MODS /h/slackernews EXILEES
- 18
- 46
STATE
MANDATED
DISINFORMATION
JANNIES
- 16
- 88
HUGE UPDATE: AN INSIDER SOURCE WHO MODERATES LEAKED.CX 
HAS CONFIRMED TO ME THAT HE BELIEVES THIS IS LEGITIMATE
Context
MusicMafia was a group of leakers active several years ago that arguably first brought the sale of leaked music in the general public. Through their website, http://musicmafia.to, and later a private domain, they sold tens of thousands of dollars worth of leaked music. This blatant infringement on copyright and computer hacking laws even brought them minor media attention.
Other escapades included hacking the twitters of many notable "artists," such as drake:
The value of these songs/files to collectors that MusicMafia possesses cannot be understated. One track in particular, the most notable track known as "Can U Be" by Kanye West, is valued at upwards of 40k. MusicMafia is, almost certainly, in possession of entire unreleased albums and discographies that could fetch over a hundred thousand dollars to the right people.
Unfortunately, the way that these leaked songs are acquired was/is some combination of social engineering, sim swapping, fraud, and credential stuffing, all of which are illegal and of great interest to the FBI, RIAA, and various other copyright enforcement bureaus 
. Recently, a teenage hacker that used the alias "Spirdark" actually got prison time for doing this in the UK https://www.xxlmag.com/hacker-lil-uzi-vert-sentenced-prison/. As such, leakers tend to want to protect their identities, not only from each other due to harassment, but due to the omnipresent threat of legal action. MusicMafia, the group which probably perpetrated some of the largest music leaks in recent memory, would want to protect this, but their identities have been kept secret thus far.
What is known about the "identity" or alias of MusicMafia, publicly at this time, is that they were a group of leakers in 2017, with the website http://musicmafia.to. After this website was shut down by the domain provider, they moved to a private, password protected site to transact business. Sometime around 2018 this website, and the "MusicMafia" alias, were both abandoned. In their place rose a new alias, "PRIVATEFRIEND" aka "PRIVATE" and afterwards "Germans." Whether privatefriend and germans are the entirety of the MusicMafia team, one remnant member, or somewhere in between isn't for me to say. However, what is known is that these aliases stemming from MusicMafia administered the site "http://leakth.is" which shut down in 2021, but until then was the central hub for music leaks and sales. It was also an open secret that, on this website, many sellers were basically PRIVATEFRIEND using different aliases. 
What happened today
You might recall the website http://leaked.cx from my previous post regarding someone who used AI to fake frank ocean tracks and scammed collectors out of 15k (check my profile). Well, after http://leakth.is was shut down in 2021, this website took its place, and is now the new hub for music leaking online.
Today at 7AM, someone by the name "MusicMafia2023" made a post to http://leaked.cx advertising the website http://musicmafia.info, and threatening the MusicMafia team with a doxx unless they responded to their email. Furthermore, this user says he will update the .info website with more and more information every 24 hours. You might recall that MusicMafia stopped being a thing in late 2017-early 2018, this is true, but like I said the user/users behind it are probably still active. The post can be found here (https://leaked.cx/threads/music-mafia-return.119939/). Currently, the user MusicMafia2023 who is threatening this doxx is actually active in the thread.
This was written off as a r-slurred prank/someone bullpooping by pretty much everyone, including me. That is because the website pretty much only contained public information that I've relayed to you just now, and didn't have any details besides vague "[redacted]" marks. That is, until around one hour ago, when MusicMafia2023 updated his website with this information:
If you can't read between the lines here, MusicMafia2023 has allegedly linked a public Spotify account (under a real person's name) to music leaks that MusicMafia sold years after it was added to their playlists. If legitimate, this screenshot alone is pretty much 80% of the way towards a full doxx. 
What is at stake
I already mentioned how valuable the "vault" of unreleased songs is in MusicMafia's (or the former members of) possession - think 150k, minimum. The stakes of this should also be clear - if they get doxxed, this would immediately be of great interest to every record label and copyright enforcement agency in the western hemisphere.
Is MusicMafia2023 legit? Is he bullpooping? What does he want?
As this saga continues, I will update this thread. But keep in mind, this might be an elaborate troll and I have fallen for the bait like a r-slur.
UPDATE 1: I believe this to be a legitimate doxx and so do many other longtime leakers
UPDATE 2: The doxxer is currently arguing on coded language with a leaker he alleges to be involved with MusicMafia on that public forum page lmbo
I don't know how I will get into FAANG or prod based companies but I will ! I won't stop. [12 points, 52% upvoted, 196 comments]
- 42
- 61
Congrats for making this another IITJEE. Sad.
The thing is good companies will follow good guidelines. They will have good architecture discussions, you will hear terms like orchestrator thrown at you every other day.
In startup the agenda is to make things. It will be like do things and make things chahe kaise v.
Having experience in both is good.
But having theese experience in service based is that possible? Most of the folks don't want to be getting into the software engineering's awesomeness. They don't want to know about the computer Science behind it.
To know all that it's required to be around people who have that kind of motivation.
Also it's learning the core principles of engineering. What's there with IIT JEE. It ain't just DSA bruh. All the things which I said are the heart of Engineering. You gotta love it if you're in this sub. [-49]
Shut up bro it's not another competitive exam it's a company to work in. There are thousands of other companies better than fang stop watching yt.
That's the problem where you don't read it correctly & spread gyaan. Said the word "prod based" too. Stop being unfocused and unattentive. [-29]
Aa gaye Didi Bhaiyya motivated freshers
Aa gaye apni failure ki frustration dusronpe nikalne. [-164]
Getting into faang now a days looks like an achievement and everybody is in a rat race for that, people don't think what they can achieve or learn from their it career rather than getting into faang , after almost 10years it career atleast I know better WLB and good pay to sustain you and your family along with some savings is what most of us carve for, I have the constant pressure inside faang effects mental health for many people.
Kahan jaye fir? Na padhein? Saari achi companies toh prod based hi h na almost. Seekhne Kahan milega? Prod mein h na.
Service based mein comparatively less h. [-108]
Also, be ready to get laid off randomly from these companies.
Also, be ready to die randomly from some accident.
Yes I will be ready tho. Such is life. [-31]
look beyond FAANG
Maturity is when you realise FAANG is the worst for work life and stability. There are so many good options out there.
OP has no sense of how the real world works and derives his understanding of the world from YouTube videos and day dreams.
Your post lacks common sense. You are not asking real questions or advice. You just want us to reinforce your expectations which are childish and immature. Or you want us to discourage you and use that as fuel to achieve your goals.
Either way, you are gonna lose.
Get a job, do it, learn some common sense and then ask us what your problems are.
Baby that was a statement that I will do. So unfocused you are. Nd for reference my source of information are something like "7yrs exp London guy product consultant, previously worked with practo, many more. Just an example. Many of the sources are like this." [-4]
Credit to /h/miners
Uber DEI Chief Officer fired for white supremacy.
- 71
- 162
Team Blind item, so here is a recap for those who don't have access to anything other than gmail.
Explanation of what happened:
Btw, that's a white woman in that email with an Indian last name. Lots of questions on how that happened in there, but that's an aside.
The email that went out letting everyone know that the white supremacist has been fired:
The white supremacist in question:
More article text on it that mansplains all the BIPOCs crying about their oppression::
Uber has placed its longtime head of diversity, equity and inclusion on leave after workers complained that an employee event she moderated, titled “Don’t Call Me Karen,” was insensitive to people of color.
Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber’s chief executive, and Nikki Krishnamurthy, the chief people officer, last week asked Bo Young Lee, the head of diversity, “to step back and take a leave of absence while we determine next steps,” according to an email on Thursday from Ms. Krishnamurthy to some employees that was viewed by The New York Times.
“We have heard that many of you are in pain and upset by yesterday’s Moving Forward session,” the email said. “While it was meant to be a dialogue, it’s obvious that those who attended did not feel heard.”
Employees’ concerns centered on a pair of events, one last month and another last Wednesday, that were billed as “diving into the spectrum of the ameriKKKan white woman’s experience” and hearing from white women who work at Uber, with a focus on “the ‘Karen’ persona.” They were intended to be an “open and honest conversation about race,” according to the invitation.
But workers instead felt that they were being lectured on the difficulties experienced by white women and why “Karen” was a derogatory term and that Ms. Lee was dismissive of their concerns, according to messages sent on Slack, a workplace messaging tool, that were viewed by The Times.
The term Karen has become slang for a white woman with a sense of entitlement who often complains to a manager and reports Black people and other racial minorities to the authorities. Employees felt the event organizers were minimizing racism and the harm white people can inflict on people of color by focusing on how “Karen” is a hurtful word, according to the messages and an employee who attended the events. A prominent “Karen” incident occurred in 2020, when Amy Cooper, a white woman, called 911 after a Black man bird-watching in New York’s Central Park asked her to leash her dog.
The concerns raised about the events underscored the difficulties that companies face as they navigate subjects of race and identity that have become increasingly hot-button issues in Silicon Valley and beyond. Cultural clashes over race and L.G.B.T.Q. rights have been thrust to the forefront of workplaces in recent years, including the renewed attention to discrimination in company hiring practices and the feud between Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Disney over a state law that limits classroom instruction about gender identity and sexual orientation.
At Uber, the incident was also a rare case of employee dissent under Mr. Khosrowshahi, who has shepherded the company away from the aggressive, chaotic culture that pervaded under the former chief executive, Travis Kalanick. Mr. Khosrowshahi’s efforts included increased diversity initiatives under Ms. Lee, who has led the effort since 2018. Before joining Uber, she held similar roles at the financial services firm Marsh McLennan and other companies, according to her LinkedIn profile.
“I can confirm that Bo is currently on a leave of absence,” Noah Edwardsen, an Uber spokesman, said in a statement. Ms. Lee did not respond to a request for comment.
The first of the two Don’t Call Me Karen events, in April, was part of a series called Moving Forward — discussions about race and the experiences of underrepresented groups that sprung up in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.
Several weeks after that first event, a Black woman asked during an Uber all-hands meeting how the company would prevent “tone-deaf, offensive and triggering conversations” from becoming a part of its diversity initiatives.
Ms. Lee fielded the question, arguing that the Moving Forward series was aimed at having tough conversations and not intended to be comfortable.
“Sometimes being pushed out of your own strategic ignorance is the right thing to do,” she said, according to notes taken by an employee who attended the event. The comment prompted more employee outrage and complaints to executives, according to the Slack messages and the employee.
The second of the two events, run by Ms. Lee, was intended to be a dialogue where workers discussed what they had heard in the earlier meeting.
But in Slack groups for Black and latinx employees at Uber, workers fumed that instead of a chance to provide feedback or have a dialogue, they were instead being lectured about their response to the initial Don’t Call Me Karen event.
“I felt like I was being scolded for the entirety of that meeting,” one employee wrote.
Another employee took issue with the premise that the term Karen shouldn’t be used.
“I think when people are called Karens it’s implied that this is someone that has little empathy to others or is bothered by minorities others that don’t look like them. Like why can’t bad behavior not be called out?” she wrote.
Employees greeted the news that Ms. Lee was stepping away as a sign that Uber’s leadership was taking their complaints seriously.
One employee wrote that the company’s executives “have heard us, they know we are hurting, and they want to understand what all happened too.”
Hello friend! 
- 4
- 17
FRICK FLATPAKIGGERS. FRICK SNAPIGGERS. FRICK APPIGGERS. FRICK DOCKIGGERS.
"OH, YOU WANT TO RUN GREP??? JUST INSTALL 5 INSTANCES OF UBUNTU, OK, AND 13 GTK RUNTIMES, THANKS. MODERN SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT IS SO FAST AND PORTABLE DON'T YOU LOVE IT"
TOTAL SANDBOXING DEATH.
JUST LET ME USE MY PC IN PEACE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE
Just one little byte? (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) 
1d ago
(reddit.com)
Edited 1d ago
1177 thread views
#173353
Mozilla sends popup AD overlay in FurryFox for their own VPN 
- 56
- 101
Hello and welcome to @Corp's semiannual laughing at Furryfox users thread.
Little background. There are three groups of people I feel need to go.
1. Nazis.
2. Commies.
3. FurryFox users.
It today's FurryFox drama we have something not related to coping about there ever shrinking user base as Chromium browser supremacy ravages onwards to near domination.
Ads? In my FurryFox?
I suspect the poster is a chud due to hiding what he is reading on twitter, a known alt-nazi website 
Also a massive ad that dims the background and makes you click? 
Listen! We filed a Bugzilla! It's just a bug, right? RIGHT!?!?!!?!! 
And no, supporting this under the guise of trying to earn revenue away from Google is a bit silly. A pop-up is a pop-up.
A browser that goes to great lengths to block all of the annoyances of the web (e.g. pop-ups) allowing their own annoyances through is just favoritism of itself. It is no better than Google Chrome plugging Google or > > > Edge plugging Bing Chat or whatever is new on the block.
Last thing Firefox needs is to be browser with built-in ads. In this arena, the first experience is the only one that matters. Do not let it be ads.
Funny thing is Chrome has a very clean UI. It's by nature because Google automatically benefits if you use the web, and more so if you use it through Chrome. Chrome doesn't really plug Google considering Google is the default search on all major browsers except Edge, and switching to a different provider is very easy (Google services do plug Chrome, on the other hand).
Meanwhile on a new Firefox install, I have to disable pocket, sponsored shortcuts, the new pinned tab, sponsored news articles (which are also present in Chrome iirc), and skip through the faceless girl telling me about diverse colors or some shit. Firefox is still by far the better choice, but yeah it's initially a bit annoying on a fresh install.
And you do this.
I love how fast the mods are locking down conversations relating to this topic.
Firefox is really sticking out for the wrong reasons today.
They do it for free for free software 
Lots of upset Furryfox users. If you're a FurryFox user there are several cures.
Chromium Mastercels
Cute Twinks
10/10 SN Thread
groomercord 
gets RP bot made of them AND DOES NOT CONSENT!
- 76
- 154
Hello its me again with some obscure drama for you all. Ok I will try to provide some backstory and context for you all but even if you dont get it then you'll still understand the drama. There's an ai chatbot site made for redditors with a dedicated groomercord server. People use the website to coom with by chatting to bots. The groomercord server is filled with zoomies. They were leeching off of 4chan for API keys (and stealing bots and claiming the credit) to use for the website which caused a lot of other drama that I could probably make 5 other posts about but all you need to know is that 4channers hate this website and its users and have been doing everything they can to frick with them. The drama starts with this:
To fill in the blanks, eventually the dev of the website comes in and tells the that they are being r-slurred and no bots are getting banned for fetishization or whatever.
Anyway while that is going on. People at 4chud notice something about this . They had this in their groomercord bio
Soooo they made a bot of the and this is where the meltdown starts
Meanwhile back on 4chan... They are using the bot and then sending the logs to the .
This (combined with some other things that happened) results finally in a victory for 4chud.
EDIT: Here's a link to the bot if ya wanna have some fun with it. Make sure to post logs in here if ya do: https://www.chub.ai/characters/planewalker/Val
Also here's the kurt log (the guy who was arguing with the on peepeesword)
And a microwave log
Vaxxmaxxxers and virgins vindicated. Herpes vaccine prevents a good chunk of dementia cases by preventing cold sores on your brain
- 12
- 43
- 194
- 173
Comments:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36030969
https://boards.4channel.org/g/thread/93632944/linux-graphics-stack-is-trans (EDIT: removed/jannied, archive: https://desuarchive.org/g/thread/93632944/)
HN users are noticing 
something:
« I’m on the board overseeing Linux graphics. Half of us are trans »
From a purely statistical POV, this is absurdly bizarre.
Not really.
Statistically there will be weird coincidences completely naturally. It's also quite arbitrary which we see as meaningful. If say, Linux networking has unusually many people called "John" that probably will be unnoticed because nobody pays that much attention to common, unremarkable names. If they all randomly turn out to have green eyes, then that's more visible. It's completely subjective which of those is more remarkable.
There are also likely social effects -- people stick together, and some side interests align with some fields. Eg, I think it's reasonable to guess there's going to be more furries than average in VR development. Part because VR allow you to look like whatever you want a lot of the time, part because people will invite their friends in.
It is not just a random coincidence. It's a phenomenon more broadly across programming, especially very low-level/hardware stuff.
There does seem to be a correlation between autism spectrum and gender confusion, with the former often present in individuals who are into highly technical pursuits.
The logic seems to be not conforming to masculine stereotypes ==> must be a woman.
It's not "gender confusion". They know very well who they are. You are confused about the topic.
Meanwhile on /g/:
Wake up honey, Tesla Files are here
- 21
- 54
Article is behind paywall, so here are two alternative articles:
https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/13rsxb5/whistleblower_drops_100_gigabytes_of_tesla/
https://old.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/comments/13rswol/whistleblower_drops_100_gigabytes_of_tesla/
https://twitter.com/ElectrekCo/status/1661823273695322121
https://twitter.com/FredericLambert/status/1661827781213278209
https://twitter.com/fly4dat/status/1661828427874271236
https://twitter.com/maxrdlb/status/1661851392926011392
sister hole:
- 52
- 36
Basically this got his talk on compile-time reflection downgraded from keynote to regular talk. Cope, seethe and dilation ensues.
For more context: a month ago, a lot of what I thought were decent sounding talks were just straight up rejected from RustConf and this caused a lot of twitter seethe. Additionally, there was a whole trademark debacle where the rust foundations tried to claim the rust logo as their intellectual property, causing a lot of pushback.
Overall, I think the larger trend is the corpo-fication of rust. Look at all the jewish chads from Amazon, Google, etc. in the leadership of the Rust foundation. Very bearish on the future of the language, especially since a lot of its semantics remain unspecified. Will rust be coopted by the tech cartel like all the web standards did and become r-slurred? !codecels discuss.
Twitter link as well: https://twitter.com/__phantomderp/status/1662216110211727360
cracks the Windows XP activation encryption algorithm
Get passwords from pixelated images. oh fun fun
- 23
- 62
Haven't tried this myself but came across it and would be neat to try it.
- 6
- 15
Good luck, I don't see it happening!
- 2
- 12
1d ago
(youtube.com)
Edited 1d ago
356 thread views
#173490
Daniel Micay,GrapheneOS lead
, cuts ties with Louis Rossmann over ONE SINGLE COMMENT he made a YEAR ago
- 16
- 35
Google’s Photo App Still Can’t Find Gorillas. And Neither Can Apple’s. 
- 52
- 71
Eight years after a controversy over Black people being mislabeled as gorillas by image analysis software — and despite big advances in computer vision — tech giants still fear repeating the mistake.
When Google released its stand-alone Photos app in May 2015, people were wowed by what it could do: analyze images to label the people, places and things in them, an astounding consumer offering at the time. But a couple of months after the release, a software developer, Jacky Alciné, discovered that Google had labeled photos of him and a friend, who are both Black, as “gorillas,” a term that is particularly offensive because it echoes centuries of racist tropes.
In the ensuing controversy, Google prevented its software from categorizing anything in Photos as gorillas, and it vowed to fix the problem. Eight years later, with significant advances in artificial intelligence, we tested whether Google had resolved the issue, and we looked at comparable cow tools from its competitors: Apple, Amazon and Microsoft.
Photo apps made by Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft rely on artificial intelligence to allow us to search for particular items, and pinpoint specific memories, in our increasingly large photo collections. Want to find your day at the zoo out of 8,000 images? Ask the app. So to test the search function, we curated 44 images featuring people, animals and everyday objects.
We started with Google Photos. When we searched our collection for cats and kangaroos, we got images that matched our queries. The app performed well in recognizing most other animals.
But when we looked for gorillas, Google Photos failed to find any images. We widened our search to baboons, chimpanzees, orangutans and monkeys, and it still failed even though there were images of all of these primates in our collection.
We then looked at Google’s competitors. We discovered Apple Photos had the same issue: It could accurately find photos of particular animals, except for most primates. We did get results for gorilla, but only when the text appeared in a photo, such as an image of Gorilla Tape.
The photo search in Microsoft OneDrive drew a blank for every animal we tried. Amazon Photos showed results for all searches, but it was over-inclusive. When we searched for gorillas, the app showed a menagerie of primates, and repeated that pattern for other animals.
There was one member of the primate family that Google and Apple were able to recognize --- lemurs, the permanently startled-looking, long-tailed animals that share opposable thumbs with humans, but are more distantly related than are apes.
Google's and Apple's cow tools were clearly the most sophisticated when it came to image analysis.
Yet Google, whose Android software underpins most of the world's smartphones, has made the decision to turn off the ability to visually search for primates for fear of making an offensive mistake and labeling a person as an animal. And Apple, with technology that performed similarly to Google's in our test, appeared to disable the ability to look for monkeys and apes as well.
Consumers may not need to frequently perform such a search --- though in 2019, an iPhone user complained on Apple's customer support forum that the software "can't find monkeys in photos on my device." But the issue raises larger questions about other unfixed, or unfixable, flaws lurking in services that rely on computer vision --- a technology that interprets visual images --- as well as other products powered by A.I.
Mr. Alciné was dismayed to learn that Google has still not fully solved the problem and said society puts too much trust in technology.
"I'm going to forever have no faith in this A.I.," he said.
Computer vision products are now used for tasks as mundane as sending an alert when there is a package on the doorstep, and as weighty as navigating cars and finding perpetrators in law enforcement investigations.
Errors can reflect racist attitudes among those encoding the data. In the gorilla incident, two former Google employees who worked on this technology said the problem was that the company had not put enough photos of Black people in the image collection that it used to train its A.I. system. As a result, the technology was not familiar enough with darker-skinned people and confused them for gorillas.
As artificial intelligence becomes more embedded in our lives, it is eliciting fears of unintended consequences. Although computer vision products and A.I. chatbots like ChatGPT are different, both depend on underlying reams of data that train the software, and both can misfire because of flaws in the data or biases incorporated into their code.
Microsoft recently limited users' ability to interact with a chatbot built into its search engine, Bing, after it instigated inappropriate conversations.
Microsoft's decision, like Google's choice to prevent its algorithm from identifying gorillas altogether, illustrates a common industry approach --- to wall off technology features that malfunction rather than fixing them.
"Solving these issues is important," said Vicente Ordóñez, a professor at Rice University who studies computer vision. "How can we trust this software for other scenarios?"
Michael Marconi, a Google spokesman, said Google had prevented its photo app from labeling anything as a monkey or ape because it decided the benefit "does not outweigh the risk of harm."
Apple declined to comment on users' inability to search for most primates on its app.
Representatives from Amazon and Microsoft said the companies were always seeking to improve their products.
Bad Vision
When Google was developing its photo app, which was released eight years ago, it collected a large amount of images to train the A.I. system to identify people, animals and objects.
Its significant oversight --- that there were not enough photos of Black people in its training data --- caused the app to later malfunction, two former Google employees said. The company failed to uncover the "gorilla" problem back then because it had not asked enough employees to test the feature before its public debut, the former employees said.
Google profusely apologized for the gorillas incident, but it was one of a number of episodes in the wider tech industry that have led to accusations of bias.
Other products that have been criticized include HP's facial-tracking webcams, which could not detect some people with dark skin, and the Apple Watch, which, according to a lawsuit, failed to accurately read blood oxygen levels across skin colors. The lapses suggested that tech products were not being designed for people with darker skin. (Apple pointed to a paper from 2022 that detailed its efforts to test its blood oxygen app on a "wide range of skin types and tones.")
Years after the Google Photos error, the company encountered a similar problem with its Nest home-security camera during internal testing, according to a person familiar with the incident who worked at Google at the time. The Nest camera, which used A.I. to determine whether someone on a property was familiar or unfamiliar, mistook some Black people for animals. Google rushed to fix the problem before users had access to the product, the person said.
However, Nest customers continue to complain on the company's forums about other flaws. In 2021, a customer received alerts that his mother was ringing the doorbell but found his mother-in-law instead on the other side of the door. When users complained that the system was mixing up faces they had marked as "familiar," a customer support representative in the forum advised them to delete all of their labels and start over.
Mr. Marconi, the Google spokesman, said that "our goal is to prevent these types of mistakes from ever happening." He added that the company had improved its technology "by partnering with experts and diversifying our image datasets."
In 2019, Google tried to improve a facial-recognition feature for Android smartphones by increasing the number of people with dark skin in its data set. But the contractors whom Google had hired to collect facial scans reportedly resorted to a troubling tactic to compensate for that dearth of diverse data: They targeted homeless people and students. Google executives called the incident "very disturbing" at the time.
The Fix?
While Google worked behind the scenes to improve the technology, it never allowed users to judge those efforts.
Margaret Mitchell, a researcher and co-founder of Google's Ethical AI group, joined the company after the gorilla incident and collaborated with the Photos team. She said in a recent interview that she was a proponent of Google's decision to remove "the gorillas label, at least for a while."
"You have to think about how often someone needs to label a gorilla versus perpetuating harmful stereotypes," Dr. Mitchell said. "The benefits don't outweigh the potential harms of doing it wrong."
Dr. Ordóñez, the professor, speculated that Google and Apple could now be capable of distinguishing primates from humans, but that they didn't want to enable the feature given the possible reputational risk if it misfired again.
Google has since released a more powerful image analysis product, Google Lens, a tool to search the web with photos rather than text. Wired discovered in 2018 that the tool was also unable to identify a gorilla.
But when we showed it a gorilla, a chimpanzee, a baboon, and an orangutan, Lens seemed to be stumped, refusing to label what was in the image and surfacing only “visual matches” — photos it deemed similar to the original picture.
For gorillas, it showed photos of other gorillas, suggesting that the technology recognizes the animal but that the company is afraid of labeling it.
These systems are never foolproof, said Dr. Mitchell, who is no longer working at Google. Because billions of people use Google’s services, even rare glitches that happen to only one person out of a billion users will surface.
“It only takes one mistake to have massive social ramifications,” she said, referring to it as “the poisoned needle in a haystack.”
- 28
- 13
I'm kinda tired of trend peepeeriders and their cooming over the latest current thing in programming circles, every 5 minutes its
all this shit is insanely lame and I have no idea how anyone is passionate about any of it
I'm thinking of picking up C# just because it's grillpilled and gets away from this tism, what other languages accomplish this
- 125
- 78
Golden parachutes: Record severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation
- 22
- 89
The Wikimedia Foundation released its Form 990 tax return for 2021 on 9 May 2023. This shows that outgoing CEO Katherine Maher was paid a severance package of US$623,286 in 2021 -- slightly more than one-and-a-half times her base compensation in her last full year at the Wikimedia Foundation. So Maher -- who left Wikimedia at the end of April 2021 to join the Atlantic Council and currently serves on the US Department of State's Foreign Affairs Policy Board -- earned a total of US$798,632 in the 2021 calendar year.
Janeen Uzzell received US$324,748 in severance pay, having worked less than two-and-a-half years for the Wikimedia Foundation
COO Janeen Uzzell, who was hired by the Wikimedia Foundation in late January 2019 and left at the end of June 2021 to become the CEO of the National Society of Black Engineers on 7 July 2021 (see also the profile in this issue's In the media section), received a severance package of US$324,748 in 2021. This is roughly equivalent to her last full annual salary; she earned a total of US$515,553 from the Wikimedia Foundation in 2021.
The severance payments made in 2021 set a new record for the Foundation. The highest previous severance payment was US$262,500. Paid to outgoing CEO Lila Tretikov in 2016, this was about 75% of her last full year's salary.
The Foundation noted in its post on the Wikimedia-l mailing list that it would in future use a new, standardised severance policy for staff at all levels, described in a Diff post published last month.
The new policy sets a cap on severance pay of one month's salary for each year worked at the WMF, up to a maximum of nine months (unless local law dictates otherwise). Under this scheme both Maher and Uzzell, who spent less than two-and-a-half years at the WMF, would have qualified for much smaller severance payments. But even the new scheme allows for "exceptions":
The guidelines have also provided an opportunity to better align our processes globally when staff leave the Foundation. This includes a new standardized severance policy for staff at all levels of one month of severance pay for every year of their employment, up to nine months (unless local laws require otherwise) -- any exceptions require a joint recommendation by the Head of Talent & Culture and the General Counsel, with final approval from the CEO.
So it seems by no means assured that the new policy will prevent the recurrence of such large severance payments -- which are ultimately paid from global Wikipedia donations.
Discussions during the 18 May conversation with the WMF Trustees
Former WMF Board of Trustees Chair Florence Devouard asked some further questions about the new severance policy on the mailing list, which she then also submitted as discussion topics for the Conversation with Trustees that took place on 18 May 2023 and is available on YouTube.
The discussions related to executive pay took up about 15 minutes of the 80-minute meeting, beginning here at time code 23:42 and ending at time code 38:36. First, WMF trustee Nataliia Tymkiv took the following question:
"I would like to know the trustees' characterisation of the growth of executive compensation and whether they think reducing it to historical levels is preferable to layoffs."
Nataliia said that while US compensation may seem high to someone from Europe, it was data-based rather than based on fundraising success and always reflected local salary levels, adding that going back to past compensation levels was not feasible:
"There is also no way of returning back to historical, unless we actually start hiring people who are really rich, and they can just allow to be philanthropic, and you know, not receiving salaries, but I think that's also not sustainable to just expect that rich people who don't need to care for their bread in the morning can just come and work for us."
Florence's questions
The Wikimedia Foundation's Form 990 for 2021. Information on executive compensation can be found on pp. 8--9 and 49--50
Next came some of the questions about the severance policy that Florence had submitted before the meeting:
1. Is the one month of severance pay entirely based on the last month's salary, the last year or previous years?
2. Will this policy affect severances for executives?
3. For staff that are "exceptions", are there particular staff members that are able to negotiate exceptions when they join the Foundation, do they negotiate their exception when they depart, or is it something that can be discussed during their tenure?
4. How many staff are considered "exceptions" and will there be a maximum number of exceptions?
These questions were partially answered (time code 28:47) by CEO Maryana Iskander. Maryana mansplained at length that the new severance policy was part of an effort to harmonise the Foundation's approach as much as possible across different countries, including for executives, but allowed that there would always be exceptions for various reasons. The policy might also need adjusting in the light of experience. However, she confirmed that the policy will take the last month of paid salary as the basis for calculating the severance.
This is an important point, as there have already been cases of Wikimedia executives being awarded steep pay rises towards the end of their tenure with the Foundation (see Wikimedia Foundation salaries on Meta-Wiki). Indeed, according to the Form 990, Katherine Maher was paid US$164,567 in base compensation for four months' work in 2021. This would appear to be equivalent to an annual base compensation of US$493,701, considerably more than her US$404,053 base compensation in 2020. Questions submitted by Florence that remained unanswered in the meeting were:
1. When severance packages would be negotiated or re-negotiated
2. Whether the WMF would report the numbers or percentages of staff qualifying for an "exception"
3. Whether there were plans for a maximum severance for those in the exception segment (for example, at most x months per year of employment)
4. Whether anything is being done to better address the serious escalation of severance packages of the high-level executives
Next, Maryana answered a question on whether there was an incentive system in place to invite Foundation staff to make donations to the Foundation or other Wikimedia entities. She said there was no such system in place, but some staff did voluntarily make such monetary contributions; many of course also volunteered on the projects.
Who approved these severance packages?
The next question was about who approved the above severance packages. Nataliia mansplained that the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees approved them (with input from the Talent and Culture Committee), but that severance agreements and related Board votes and resolutions were confidential and not made available to the public.
The last question in this section of the meeting concerned Maryana Iskander's and Selena Deckelmann's compensation. While their salaries were not yet reflected in the 2021 Form 990 (both only joined in 2022, and the 2022 data will only need to be reported in 2024), they were proactively disclosed a few weeks ago on Meta: Iskander's base compensation is currently US$453,000 and that of Selena Deckelmann, Chief Product and Technology Officer, is US$420,000. When asked if it was planned to make this kind of proactive disclosure of current executive compensation a regular practice, Iskander gave a non-committal answer:
"It's not clear that this type of disclosure will be necessary -- now that it has been disclosed -- in future years. But the intent certainly is to continue to use the Annual Plan as a place to increase visibility, transparency and accountability of information from the Foundation, I think with the intentionality that we, I hope, demonstrated this year."
For a summary of other topics discussed at the meeting see the notes on Meta-Wiki. -- AK
Proposed amendment of arbitration policy
There is an ongoing referendum on a proposed amendment to the arbitration policy. The proposed amendment is:
The final sentence of Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy#Appeal of decisions, which reads Remedies may be appealed to, and amended by, Jimbo Wales, unless the case involves Jimbo Wales's own actions, is removed.
At the time of writing, "Yes" votes are outnumbering "No" votes 154:93.
- HenryKissingerEnjoyer : It's only bad because he didn't talk about banning all AI
- 64
- 137
Some wrongthink in the dead comments:
how do these assclowns never learn to not trust the government?
by "somecompanyguy", who has an important message in his bio
I mean seriously? guy takes a massive lead - steals data, and then proposes a license moat? come on. Fu*k this guy.
by "3327", who doesn't know he's shadowbanned
Sam Altman CEO of OpenAI cries Wolf to Senate panel, decides to play on the fear narrative (which politicians take hook, line and sinker) - - to call for licensing and regulation - - which only benefits major players, of course which huge pockets to bribe politicians even more.
Classic play to elbow out upstart small competitors . . . .
by "stevespang", who doesn't know he's shadowbanned
If safety standards is the r-slurred political correctness filter of chatGPT this will only lead to bad consequences
by "davidguetta", who doesn't know he's shadowbanned
I'm starting to think that OpenAI is a new Facebook, and their CEO is a dangerous butthole
- 21
- 66
Just one little byte? (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ)
16d ago
(news.ycombinator.com)
Edited 16d ago
1684 thread views
#169631
YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers | Hacker News
- 172
- 172
Asked for comment, a Google spokesperson told IGN that it was a "small experiment."
"We're running a small experiment globally that urges viewers with ad blockers enabled to allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium," they said via email. "Ad blocker detection is not new, and other publishers regularly ask viewers to disable ad blockers."
reddit discus
https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/13e2cay/youtube_has_started_blocking_ad_blockers/
https://old.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/13cfdbi/apparently_ad_blockers_are_not_allowed_on_youtube/ <- This is where it was originally first posted (1k Updoots and 1k cumments)
poster note: I tried adding all the 'its over' to capture the diversity that this decision will affect and was met with this
i do not feel bad at all 
- HenryKissingerEnjoyer : ITT: Burger neolibs cope and seethe
- SlackerNews : Neolib cope inside
Neolib cope inside
Europoors attempt to become even poorer by making sure that absolutely no AI development takes place in the EU at all 
- 155
- 210
Why are euros like this? Is it the brain injuries from soccer balls?
- 21
- 62
Someone should invite OP here
I want to take 100% of the risk.
Yet wants VC? Huh?
If you’re taking VC to fricking de-risk you’re not going to make it
The idea is to grow FAST [-76]
Wow you are really bad at this. VCs want someone else to work with you because they can see you as the risk, not your business venture. They want a partner because they don’t trust you to be responsible with their money. After what you’ve posted here, they are so right about you.
“I want to take 100% of the risk”?! You are literally trying to get VC money, they are the ones actually taking the risk! You can’t see this fact and that’s why you can’t get funding. 🤣
Some incredible Redditor pointed out that the word I was looking for is 100% responsibility.
Btw stop being such a bootlicker it’s fricking disgusting brah [-26]
Unfortunately can't share any deets about the business.
But honestly, this is the entire reason behind this rant. I spoke to my father and he literally told me:
"Why are you being honest with these fricks? Just lie to them"
AND IT MADE ME FRICKING THINK.
Wise words from a wise man.
Man frick these VCs I might. [-16]
Lol “I’m a solo soldier look at my numbers” this guy is fricking hilarious.
What is your startup and could you at least hire someone so you can say you have a team? Maybe just try to give off the appearance of having a co-founder without actually giving any equity away?
Or you could hire someone for “consulting” + a handshake to “make them a co-founder” after you get funding. The “consulting” would be something like $2,000 and they go to the VC meeting and tell the VC they are your co-founders under such and such legal terms blah blah blah and then once you get the funding oh some parts of the agreement fell through but I am looking for a replacement. Definitely cannot live without a co-founder I promise you I will have one or two even by the time we need to raise again!
Tai Lopez had a better business plan. Jesus Christ, your biggest problem is your shitty attitude. Go to Walmart and see if they're hiring so the world doesn't have to deal with you.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/13khe73/rtws_just_a_reminder_for_your_mindset/
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah
Finding competent founders is extremely important because it shows your ability to inspire someone to join your cause and work as hard as you. Frankly speaking, you need to find people as crazy as you. I didn't, one of my cofounders sucked -- but I made it work and got an exit. Now I have great cofounders. Also, your desire not to share your business is a little strange -- I would be wary of someone who sounds selfish and thinks very highly of himself; I'm not saying you shouldn't but it rubs people the wrong way. You are really funny though!
Solid point, but I have it covered. Matter of fact, I’ve gotten offers from people to join.
Not hard to inspire people when shit is working lol.
And btw, I’m not afraid of people copying my idea or anything stupid like that.
That’s not why I’m not sharing details.
I just want to have this account as a type whatever that comes to my mind account.
My business is linked to my real name. I don’t want this shit to be SEO’d and associated to me. [-4]
I’d want you to have a team and cofounder just because I don’t like the way you sound and come off. Any business tied to only you, I wouldn’t want. Good luck though my friend I wish you the best.
Hahahahahahaha he thinks he cracked the code.
This is how we all sound, we just put on a mask during the meetings.
I get you though brah I need to put together a solid team (without a cofounder) [-24]
They want you to have a cofounder so you won't fail. It's really that simple. Their goal is to make money, you failing too early makes them none. You need a team. You can't run a business without a team. If they fund you and it turns out you're incapable of working with people you would end up a complete dud. A dud they can avoid by requiring that you establish a team.
Hey there let me help you out. the VCs are dropping that line because they have no interest in you and want to look nice. Stop playing bill gates and pipe down. You havent made it yet.
Hahahahahahahahahahaahhahahah
You know nothing of the world I am in. Get the frick off here [-5]
VC here. Responding in like. First of all - we are buttholes in meetings. We shouldn’t be, but we are.
You are never gonna get a proper VC investment with that attitude you stupid frick. You want us to like you, play the game. Get an attitude check and listen to people who have been building businesses longer than you’ve been alive. Never lie to a VC. You will get fricked.
If you can’t impress investors how the the heck are you going to impress customers/clients. How are you gonna impress people to work for you?
Business fail all the darn time because of founders with your attitude. Your company will have a shit culture. Find an incubator and ask for help if you can’t find a co-founder and a team. You can negotiate equity share with them and take control. That is until you get diluted out or fired. Cause you probably will be.
From reading your comments it sounds like you know nothing about being a founder and an entrepreneur. My biggest price of advice. Read a book. Basic as shit but you’ll need it - read Venture Deals.
Even Steve Jobs had co-founders.
Never lie to a VC. You will get fricked.
darn, you really are that guy huh?
You impress customers with product. Not by personality. Maybe if you’re Elon.
99.999% of the products people use every single fricking day they wouldn’t be able to name who the “impressive” founder is.
About impressing people, I think most people agree that a nice healthy paycheck is pretty darn impressive.
And finally, about impressing VCs, haha you stupid piece of shit don’t act like you’re anything more than a glorified gambler. The majority of the founders that impress you fail and they fail pretty darn hard.
Oh also, don’t compare me to Steve Jobs please, keep that stuff for motivational videos. [-5]
Credit to /h/miners