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points by thomascountz 18 hours ago | 0 comments

At one point in my life, I would've found this data fascinating (if it were opt-in, perhaps)! Now, I find it exhausting.

A similar discussion came up recently with Siri Recap[1], where some expressed how useful they thought it was and that, as a party to the conversations it summarizes, there was very little moral or ethical concern. But I have a social concern.

If I'm having a chat with someone, there's a milieu constructed around the fact that not everything will be remembered verbatim. There are all sorts of social and contextual cues that can easily get lost if listening gets replaced by flat relentless transcription.

With Recaps and this social graph (were it to be productized), the informal fluidity in the way we relate to one another starts to go away, and the expectations that follow from that become artificial and burdensome. In the same way that autocorrect has made typos unacceptable, how could you ever be forgiven for forgetting the name of your colleague's new nephew or the Italian village that your neighbor took a spontaneous boat trip to while on vacation last year?

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49641401

[–] ryandrake 15 hours ago

I've also become totally exhausted by all these "someone is making your computer do X behind your back" revelations. Whether it's the app developer or OS vendor, it doesn't really matter. When did PCs stop being the user's computer / operating on behalf of the user, and instead start operating on behalf of the OS vendor and app developers? Every day there's a new case of this.

[–] npunt 22 minutes ago

The charitable take is that computing has grown to expand more and more use cases, and to deliver good experiences for those use cases requires simplifying assumptions, and that's where the inherent complexity of life leaks in.

[–] dingaling 14 hours ago

Largely, I believe, when phones crossed over from being basic communication devices to being smartphones, but retained their 'appliance' nature.

An entire generation thereby grew up with personal computing represented by vendor-controlled handheld appliances, and naturally regarded actual PCs in the same manner.

And their skills to manage a PC atrophied too, leading to a feedback loop.

[–] ryandrake 11 hours ago

I just don't want to have this ongoing relationship with my software vendor. When I buy an Apple computer, I don't want to have a relationship with Apple. I don't want to log in to iCloud. I don't want them deciding what software I can run and what I can't. I don't want them wagging their finger disapprovingly at me when I download and run something not "notarized" by them. I don't want them mediating my use of my own computer! When I buy a Windows PC it's even worse. Again, I don't want to log into a Microsoft account. I don't want them pushing other software on me via in-OS ads. I don't want to send telemetry back to them. I don't want them recording my screen and saving it god knows where for nebulous "features".

When I buy a table saw, I don't expect DeWalt to hang around my workshop telling me what I can and can't cut, watching and logging what wood I use and when I use it, what my finished product looks like, changing the features and buttons on the saw in the middle of the night. Why the fuck do we tolerate this from software??

It's gotten to the point that Linux is the only sensible option, and not all distributions! Some of them are letting telemetry and metrics and A/B testing creep in. And some third party Linux software is just as intrusive and demanding as commercial Windows/Mac software.

[–] mixmastamyk 7 hours ago

Sounds like you’d like our group: https://trustworthy.technology/

There’s an invite link to a chat group as well, at the bottom of the page.

[–] Obscurity4340 2 hours ago

Great resource!

[–] skinfaxi 14 hours ago

It's even reflected in the language used by younger generations, asking if things are "allowed" or assuming things are illegal by default.

[–] dylan604 13 hours ago

In some Linux distros like Debian, everything is illegal/prohibited until you explicitly allow it and only comes with the bare minimum of software necessary to make the OS work. Contrast that to other distros like Ubuntu where everything comes preinstalled and is very permissive. These obviously target different audiences. Smart phones are targeting different audiences too. The power users annoyed by the dumb things the device does just means you're not the target audience and are just bonus buyers for their bottom line.

[–] hparadiz 5 hours ago

Complete nonsense. You get passwordless root upon install.

[–] gf000 9 hours ago

> In some Linux distros like Debian, everything is illegal/prohibited until you explicitly allow it

Bit of a nitpick, but this is certainly not true of their userspace, where an `npm install` can just install a keylogger or read your ssh keys, or do whatever it wants -- except for updating your video card driver.

[–] dylan604 8 hours ago

I would hope that someone deliberately choosing to run a headless Debian install would be wise enough to not go around running `npm install` willy nilly. In my personal experience, I've never once needed an `npm install` in Debian environment. I've only ever used them in server environments and to be honest thinking about it, that was all pre-npm when javascript was kept where it belonged in your browser and not my server. Someone screwed us all allowing JS on the server, but that's an entirely different conversation.

[–] gf000 8 hours ago

Well, it's enough to use a trusted app as your own user on non-trusted data. The former just has to have a memory vulnerability, which is not rare given most of it is C.

So yeah, don't be so confident in it working out. Unfortunately gnu/linux desktop is severally lacking in security (and by desktop I mean a headless personal use as well)

[–] Xirdus 5 hours ago

I used to run npm install unsupervised from a script on headless Debian that I deliberately chose dozens of times everyday. Later I moved my CI to Alpine.

[–] direwolf20 11 hours ago

Side effects of living in an authoritarian panopticon

[–] ssss11 33 minutes ago

And PC’s became appliance like with updates, accounts, and now ads

[–] sellmesoap 11 hours ago

I always thought the quote "you're not the customer you're the product" originated with RMS, I went to look it up before I commented and it turns out it was Richard Serra and Carlota Fay Schoolman in 1973! Just as true now as then. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/07/16/product/

[–] imglorp 3 hours ago

Yes, and if the OS maker is not mining you for data, they are leaving mountains of cash on the table. So mine they must and mine they will. The financial incentives are overwhelming.

We should be removing those incentives at every level: legislative, societal, government and private.

[–] SoftTalker 12 hours ago

> When did PCs stop being the user's computer / operating on behalf of the user

When we connected them to the internet.

[–] coldtea 11 hours ago

We connected them to the internet a full decade or more before this happened.

[–] nofunsir 57 minutes ago

I would say it started with Chrome and Gmail

[–] antiframe 10 hours ago

My computer has been connected to the Internet since the 90s and it's also constantly been my computer. The trick is, run software that is free.

[–] SoftTalker 9 hours ago

But it was the internet that made all the spying, profiling, and tracking possible. Before that, there was no motivation, so all software was developed and sold solely on its benefits to the user.

Today, even free software can have telemetry and ulterior motives.

[–] gimlichgu 13 hours ago

Richard Stallman told y'all when it happened that it was happening

[–] jabroni_salad 6 hours ago

for me it was around the time of windows 8, that I felt my computer had a lot of things to do that weren't the application I actually wanted to use. Before that I would just occasionally feel that the system could be a little kludgy.

[–] wat10000 10 hours ago

People want the features that these things drive. PCs stopped being a purely "user says X, do X" thing at approximately the moment they became powerful enough to run things in the background. The idea that the computer would be helpful and do things for you beyond what you explicitly asked for is pretty attractive. People don't like being spied on, but good news, this one is all local. This isn't like Facebook building a social graph for you so they can sell the data to advertisers.

[–] sandworm101 9 hours ago

Every bad day for Apple-Microsoft is another great day for switching to Linux.

You have choices. Make them.

[–] direwolf20 11 hours ago

As soon as they were connected to a network and capable of participating in the business OODA loop against their competitors in real time.

[–] ctippett 18 hours ago

I too would've found this fascinating at one point, but my jaded older self now just finds this incredibly creepy, unsettling and not at all surprising.

[–] II2II 8 hours ago

I suspect a lot of the fascination is because the information can be used to improve our quality of life. I suspect the cynicism comes from those who have the most access to this information using it to improve their quality of life at our expense. (That, and actually making use of the information takes more effort than most people are willing to expend.)

I have always been leery of data collection, but I have my own parallel: there was a lot of optimism about the benefits of personal computers in the 1980's and 1990's. Of course, that was pushed by the industry itself. I have since realized that what was happening then was not all that different from what is happening today. The outcomes were different because the tools were different, but it basically reduced/reduces to a bunch of people trying to enrich themselves by promising one thing and delivering another.

[–] tclancy 15 hours ago

Add me to the list. This feels like a “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions” item.

[–] jerf 15 hours ago

That saying is what it is for good reasons, but the path to post-capitalist dystopian hell is paved with bad intentions covered with plausible deniability.

I'm sure they'll sell this on what it can hypothetically do that is useful to the owner, but I don't think any of us need to pretend this will be anything other than something inimical to our desires in the end. I don't need to give them their deniability.

[–] Nevermark 4 hours ago

The system could work just as well for the user, stored only on the users devices, syncing in encrypted form only.

The plausibility in plausible deniability evaporates instantly with device/service/software provider's accessibility.

But faux plausible deniability seems to be just as effective of a fig leaf.

[–] pryce 2 hours ago

> With Recaps and this social graph (were it to be productized), the informal fluidity in the way we relate to one another starts to go away, and the expectations that follow from that become artificial and burdensome.

As this becomes normalized, people will retreat to a safer persona even in private conversations. This does not solve the problem at all; a great many mental illnesses and dynamics around pathological abuse are tied to the details of how each of us has a private and public-facing persona.

Already I see Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha are heavily resenting the demands placed on them to be always in 'branding'/'self-marketing' modes, and are seeking ways to retreat from the relentless expectations of being always in 'public persona', and are suspicious that this way of living is harmful.

[–] sdeframond 15 hours ago

This thought path has been explored by the Black Mirror series in the episode The Entire History of You.

https://black-mirror.fandom.com/wiki/The_Entire_History_of_Y...

[–] r3trohack3r 13 hours ago

I wouldn’t call black mirror an “exploration” of thought. It’s rather myopic.

It’s like going to the 1962 world fair but, instead of optimism, everyone just wants to tell you why everything in the future sucks.

[–] dylan604 13 hours ago

No, it's an exploration of what could happen based on things we've already seen/experienced but with the knob turned to an 11. It's what should happen in pretty much what if round table situation. "Hey, would could build this thing that does something that we are specifically thinking about that would be cool/fun/benevolent" is only part of the discussion. "How could someone else turn and use it in a way not anticipated so they use it for their own gains in a way that is shocking/malevolent" should be the natural follow up. Can the thing be updated to not be used for unintended negative purposes or will the negative out weigh the positive so that it shouldn't be made in the first place??? Sadly, it seems the follow up questions are never asked. Instead, we get scifi people doing it and then getting reviews like yours instead of looking deeper into point

[–] ddj231 6 hours ago

Adjacent to this I think it’s becoming clear that these technologies also change the signals we receive from one another. For example remembering details in a conversation is a signal that you were listening. If some system makes a breach into that social interaction you lose that signal. Now remembering details is no longer a signal.

I’m seeing it with polished websites. A polished site used to be a signal that a product was somewhat well thought out—at least it was worth the creators time to polish its marketing page. While now that AI products spit those out with AI speak that signal is lost.

I wonder if we’ll find out that the signal itself was more important than the means of sending the signal.

[–] PaulHoule 15 hours ago

I go out as-a-fox as a street photographer using a shtick that makes sure people almost always remember my name and i find it a little embarrassing that I can't remember that many names or if it is a Megan how exactly I am supposed to spell it, etc.

I feel like people expect more from a fox with a lot of tails and I'm definitely look for a personal information manager that can accurately timestamp and geocode all my interactions with very little perceived effort on my part.

[–] josephg 14 hours ago

There’s a very big difference between opting in to using a tool and having the tool silently start analysing you in the background.

[–] UltraSane 13 hours ago

I'm really trying to understand what as-a-fox means.

[–] gnabgib 7 hours ago

It's in his profile https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=PaulHoule -> https://gen5.info/fox/ -> User's Manual for the Fox-Photographer

[–] nehal3m 13 hours ago

Same. A furry photographer?

[–] zargon 13 hours ago

In context, I interpreted it as a furry costume.

[–] kayodelycaon 12 hours ago

Based on the second paragraph, I’d assume a person in a fox fursuit with a camera. I can only imagine how hot that costume would be.

[–] pizzafeelsright 7 hours ago

You could text Paul. He is but a Google search away to see the shtick.

[–] matwood 12 hours ago

I’ve been thinking about this a lot with zoom recordings. In office we used to have chats about a wide range of topics that were sometimes heated, but also respectful. Now with every meeting recorded, it’s all become pretty saccharine.

[–] boredatoms 14 hours ago

Typos are now nessesary to convince people youre not an AI

[–] dylan604 13 hours ago

phew, I knew not spending a lot of effort in skool for learning proper grammar would be worth it as an adult

[–] sellmesoap 11 hours ago

The credibility of the lazy is going up, what could go wrong!

[–] wodenokoto 18 hours ago

Maybe a decade or so ago I had a discussion with a colleague about chat apps and he said, why would you want to have a conversation on snapchat if it is not saved, and I was like, why are you having this conversation now, you can't save it either.

I guess that those days are soon over.

[–] dasyatidprime 14 hours ago

See also Ted Chiang's “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling”.

[–] neutronicus 18 hours ago

Autocorrect has had the opposite effect IMO, there’s an expectation that like 1 in 8 words from an iPhone user are not what the sender intended.

Typos have just graduated from misspellings to sentences randomly being nonsensical.

[–] dylan604 13 hours ago

I swear I know the difference and when to use their, there, they're, but based on my iPhone messages, you'd think I was an illiterate buffoon. There are plenty of examples where I could show where they're making me look dumb with their edits.

[–] boringg 18 hours ago

I turned autocomplete off for this reason

[–] layer8 17 hours ago

Did your autocorrect correct “autocorrect” to “autocomplete”?

[–] QuantumNomad_ 15 hours ago

Autocorrect and autocomplete are two slightly different things IMO. Both of them are in the wordlist on my iPhone also btw.

Autocorrect is when you type a whole word, and then when you hit space the word changes to something else. When it works like it should, it changes typo’d words to the correct spelling. When it doesn’t work, it changes what you wanted to fucking say into something you didn’t mean to ducking say.

Autocomplete is when you type the beginning of a word and the remainder of that word is suggested. And also when you are starting a new word and there are suggestions for the next word to put.

Autocorrect used to be very unreliable many years ago. But to say these days that 1 in 8 words are wrong because of autocorrect or autocomplete, is very far from true. If you see that frequent typos and mistakes like wrong words, it’s because your friends are sloppy texters, not because iOS is corrupting every 8th word they type.

This whole comment was written by me on iOS just like almost all of my other HN comments btw, for reference. And I’m not trying to say I’m some kind of expert writer, far from it. But my mistakes are by the vast majority my own, not because of iOS worsening my words by autocorrecting/autocompleting things in a strange way that somehow degrades the content of my comments. What I do do however, is that I take time to read through what I have written both before and after posting, and editing as necessary. But even those edits are mostly and by a huge margin about fixing my own mistakes or adding more to say, not to fix something iOS messed up in what I wrote.

[–] dnpls 13 hours ago

Swiping the keyboard used to be unreliable on iOS, then it improved enough to be usable. Then some updates ago it started to be nonsensical. Now I swipe to type something trivial, it writes the correct word, I swipe for the next word, it replaces the previous one with some uncommon word I've never used before and makes absolutely no sense to add in a sentence. It's maddening and it happens all the time.

[–] jvogt 12 hours ago

Yes! Why is the keyboard on iOS still sooooo frustrating to use? Sometimes I wonder if it’s been intentionally nerfed to push us to use siri or apple intelligence.

I’m just waiting for the next iOS release with “Next-gen Swipe powered by Apple Intelligence Pro” (that conveniently only works on the latest 2 generations of iPhone)

[–] SoftTalker 12 hours ago

The current iOS keyboard is the worst mobile/touch keyboard I've ever used, and that goes back to Android well over a decade ago.

[–] panta 16 hours ago

I considered it intentional, since as a matter of fact "autocomplete" is more correct.

[–] coldtea 11 hours ago

Same difference

[–] heikkilevanto 15 hours ago

Autocorrupt

[–] antonvs 13 hours ago

Amplifying the dystopia is that this feature was heavily written up by an AI. So we have a feature in which machines monitor our lives being described to us by another machine which comes with its own set of dystopian risks, and no genuine human to human interaction.

Evidence sample of native Claudish: “The identity group is the tidy story: same surname, same home address, an iCloud Family flag — and it is the small half.”

[–] coldtea 11 hours ago

LLM writing makes me puke