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    Nvidia won, we all lost

    (blog.sebin-nyshkim.net)
    977 points todsacerdoti | 30 comments | | HN request time: 0.634s | source | bottom
    1. Arainach ◴[] No.44472814[source]
    Why was the title of this post changed long after posting to something that doesn't match the article title? This editorializing goes directly against HN Guidelines (but was presumably done by the HN team?)
    replies(5): >>44473148 #>>44473290 #>>44473818 #>>44473851 #>>44474717 #
    2. cbarrick ◴[] No.44473148[source]
    +1. "Nvidia won, we all lost" sets a very different tone than "NVIDIA is full of shit". It's clearly not the tone the author intended to set.

    Even more concerning is that, by editorializing the title of an article that is (in part) about how Nvidia uses their market dominance to pressure reviewers and control the narrative, we must question whether or not the mod team is complicit in this effort.

    Is team green afraid that a title like "NVIDIA is full of shit" on the front page of HN is bad for their image or stock price? Was HN pressured to change the name?

    Sometimes, editorialization is just a dumb and lazy mistake. But editorializing something like this is a lot more concerning. And it's made worse by the fact that the title was changed by the mods.

    replies(2): >>44473197 #>>44473709 #
    3. tyre ◴[] No.44473197[source]
    Okay let’s take off the tin foil hat for a second. HN has a very strong moderation team with years and years of history letting awkward (e.g. criticism of YC, YC companies) things stand.
    replies(6): >>44473253 #>>44473362 #>>44473364 #>>44473758 #>>44474079 #>>44475958 #
    4. cbarrick ◴[] No.44473253{3}[source]
    I said what I said above not as a genuinely held belief (I doubt Nvidia had any involvement in this editorialization), but as a rhetorical effect.

    There are many reasons why the editorialized-title rule exists. One of the most important reasons is so that we can trust HN as an unbiased news aggregator. Given the content of the article, this particular instance of editorialization is pretty egregious and trust breaking.

    And to be clear, those questions I asked are not outlandish to ask, even if we do trust HN enough to dismiss them.

    The title should not have been changed.

    replies(1): >>44473405 #
    5. throwaway290 ◴[] No.44473290[source]
    I think it's pretty obvious. People were investing like crazy into Nvidia on the "AI" gamble. Now everybody needs to keep hyping up Nvidia and AI no matter reality. (Until it starts to become obvious and then the selloff starts)
    replies(1): >>44473649 #
    6. blibble ◴[] No.44473362{3}[source]
    > HN has a very strong moderation team with years and years of history letting awkward (e.g. criticism of YC, YC companies) things stand.

    the attempt to steer direction is well hidden, but it is very much there

    with https://hnrankings.info/ you can see the correction applied, in real time

    the hidden bits applied to dissenting accounts? far less visible

    replies(1): >>44473749 #
    7. j_timberlake ◴[] No.44473649[source]
    Literally every single anti-AI comment I see on this site uses a form of the word "hype". You cannot make an actual objective argument against the AI-wave predictions, so you use the word hype and pretend that's a real argument and not just ranting.
    replies(1): >>44474236 #
    8. rubatuga ◴[] No.44473709[source]
    Probably malicious astroturfing is going on from Nvidia and the mods. @dang who was the moderator who edited the title?
    9. throwawayqqq11 ◴[] No.44473749{4}[source]
    Oh wow, i always had that gut feeling, but now i know. Stop killing games went from consistent rank 2 to 102 in an instant. And it all happend outside my timezone so i didnt even know it existed here.
    replies(2): >>44474780 #>>44474949 #
    10. cipher_accompt ◴[] No.44473758{3}[source]
    I'm curious whether you're playing devil's advocate or if you genuinely believe that characterizing OP’s comment as “tin foil hat” thinking is fair.

    The concentration of wealth and influence gives entities like Nvidia the structural power to pressure smaller players in the economic system. That’s not speculative -- it’s common sense, and it's supported by antitrust cases. Firms like Nvidia are incentivized to abuse their market power to protect their reputation and, ultimately, their dominance. Moreover, such entities can minimize legal and economic consequences in the rare instances that there are any.

    So what exactly is the risk created by the moderation team allowing criticism of YC or YC companies? There aren’t many alternatives -- please fill me in if I'm missing something. In contrast, allowing sustained or high-profile criticism of giants like Nvidia could, even if unlikely, carry unpredictable risks.

    So were you playing devil’s advocate, or do you genuinely think OP’s concern is more conspiratorial than it is a plausible worry about the chilling effect created by concentration of immense wealth?

    replies(1): >>44475437 #
    11. dandanua ◴[] No.44473818[source]
    Haven't you figured out the new global agenda yet? Guidelines (and rules) exist only to serve the masters.
    replies(1): >>44474194 #
    12. rectang ◴[] No.44473851[source]
    When titles are changed, the intent as I understand it is to nudge discussion towards thoughtful exchange. Discussion is forever threatening to spin out of control towards flame wars and the moderators work hard to prevent that.

    I think that if you want to understand why it might be helpful to change the title, consider how well "NVIDIA is full of shit" follows the HN comment guidelines.

    I don't imagine you will agree with the title change no matter what, but I believe that's essentially the rationale. Note that the topic wasn't flagged, which if suppression of the author's ideas or protection of Nvidia were goals would have been more effective.

    (FWIW I have plenty of issues with HN but how titles are handled isn't one of them.)

    replies(3): >>44473983 #>>44474021 #>>44474096 #
    13. mindslight ◴[] No.44474021[source]
    I agree with your explanation, but I think it's a hollow rationale. "Full of shit" is a bit aggressive and divisive, but the thesis is in the open and there is plenty of room to expand on it in the actual post. Whereas "Nvidia won" is actually just as divisive and in a way has more implied aggression (of a fait accompli), it's just cloaked in using less vulgar language.
    replies(2): >>44474252 #>>44485435 #
    14. hshdhdhj4444 ◴[] No.44474079{3}[source]
    I thought HN was a dingle moderator, dang, and now I think there may be 2 people?
    replies(1): >>44474250 #
    15. iwontberude ◴[] No.44474096[source]
    I don't see how changing the title has encouraged thoughtful exchange when the top comments are talking about the change to the title. Seems better to let moderators do their job when there is an actual problem with thoughtful exchange instead of creating one.
    16. Zambyte ◴[] No.44474194[source]
    New as of which millennium?
    17. elzbardico ◴[] No.44474236{3}[source]
    I work with AI, I consider generative AI an incredible tool in our arsenal of computing things.

    But, in my opinion, the public expectations in my opinion are clearly exaggerated and sometimes even dangerous as we ran the risk of throwing the baby with the bathwater when some ideas/marketing/vc people ideas become not realizable in the concrete world.

    Why, having this outlook, I should be banned of using the very useful word/concept of "hype"?

    replies(1): >>44474785 #
    18. card_zero ◴[] No.44474250{4}[source]
    That's correct, dang has offloaded some of the work to tomhow, another dingle.
    replies(1): >>44474302 #
    19. rectang ◴[] No.44474252{3}[source]
    The new title, “Nvidia won, we all lost”, is taken from a subheading in the actual article, which is something I’ve often seen dang recommend people do when faced with baity or otherwise problematic titles.

    https://blog.sebin-nyshkim.net/posts/nvidia-is-full-of-shit/...

    20. kevindamm ◴[] No.44474302{5}[source]
    and together they are trouble?
    replies(1): >>44474475 #
    21. ◴[] No.44474475{6}[source]
    22. shutupnerd0000 ◴[] No.44474717[source]
    Barbara Streisand requested it.
    23. Ygg2 ◴[] No.44474780{5}[source]
    Jesus Christ. That is a massive correction. I fear most of those EU petition numbers are probably bots, designed to sabotage it.
    24. j_timberlake ◴[] No.44474785{4}[source]
    Your post doesn't contain a single prediction of a problem that will occur, dangerous or otherwise, just some vague reference to "the baby might get thrown out with the bathwater". This is exactly what I'm talking about, you just talk around the issue without naming anything specific, because you don't have anything. If you did, you'd state it.

    Meanwhile the AI companies continue to produce new SotA models yearly, sometimes quarterly, meaning the evidence that you're just completely wrong never stops increasing.

    replies(1): >>44479626 #
    25. p_j_w ◴[] No.44474949{5}[source]
    HN’s moderation system (posts with lots of flagged comments get derated) seems to really easy to game. Don’t like a story? Have bots post a bunch of inflammatory comments likely to get flagged and it will go away. There’s no way the people who run the site don’t know this, so I don’t know how to possibly make the case that they are actually okay with it.
    replies(1): >>44475001 #
    26. const_cast ◴[] No.44475001{6}[source]
    I believe usually when this happens the admins like dang and tomhow manually unflag the post if they think it's relevant. Which... is not a perfect system, but it works. I've seen plenty of posts be flagged, dead, then get unflagged and revived. They'll go in and manually flag comments, too, to get the conversation back on track. So, I think site admins are aware that this is happening.

    Also, it's somewhat easy to tell who is a bot. Really new accounts are colored green. I'm sure there's also long-running bots, and I'm not sure how you would find those.

    27. sillyfluke ◴[] No.44475437{4}[source]
    >the concentration of wealth

    On this topic, I'm curious what others think of the renaming of this post:

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44435732

    The original title I gave was: "Paul Graham: without billionaires, there will be no startups."

    As it was a tweet, I was trying to summarize his conclusive point in the first part of the sentence:

    Few of them realize it, but people who say "I don’t think that we should have billionaires" are also saying "I don't think there should be startups,"

    Now, this part of the sentence to me was the far more interesting part because it was a much bolder claim than the second part of the sentence:

    because successful startups inevitably produce billionaires.

    This second part seems like a pretty obvious observation and is a completely uninteresting observation by itself.

    The claim that successful startups have produced billonaires therefore successful startups require billionaires is a far more contentious and interesting claim.

    The mods removed "paul graham" from the title and switched the title to the uninteresting second part of the sentence, turning it into a completely banal and pointless title: Successful startups produce billionaires. Thereby removing any hint of the bold claim being made by the founder of one of the most succesful VCs of the 21st century. And incidentally, also the creator of this website.

    I can only conclude someone is loathe to moderate a thread about whether billionaires are neccessary for sucessful startups to exist.

    ps. There is no explicit guideline for tweets as far as I can tell. You are forced to use an incomplete quote or are forced to summarize the tweet im some fashion.

    28. ldjkfkdsjnv ◴[] No.44475958{3}[source]
    theres alot of shadow banning, up ranking and down ranking
    29. Zambyte ◴[] No.44479626{5}[source]
    > [...] when some ideas/marketing/vc people ideas become not realizable in the concrete world.

    This is a single prediction of a problem that will occur. The tools not living up to the hype leads to disappointment, and people are likely to entirely abandon it because they got burned (throw the baby out with the bath water), even though the tools are still useful if you ignore the hype.

    30. frainfreeze ◴[] No.44485435{3}[source]
    Front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44482522