>[The GrapheneOS project] also said it has not received any kind of request for assistance from a Canadian police force in recent months.

We saw this in the US with apple (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_d...). They want the big win of forcing all encryption to have a law enforcement backdoor built in, so any time they run into encryption that hampers a legitimate investigation their first response is to throw up their hands and go "The only way we can keep you safe is if you give up this bit of your freedom." Then that effort either succeeds or fails, and then an earnest effort to decrypt this particular phone begins.

as the kind of person who has been reading the jargon file for fun since the 90s, I thought I had at least a passing familiarity with a lot of hackish slang from the old days. today i learned about nasal demons as a phrase for undefined behavior. i supposed there's still fossils in the dirt

If 10,000 people guess 10,000 fair coin flips each one of them will get more guesses right than any of the others, one of them will get fewer guesses right than any of the others, and the gulf between the two is likely to be over 4 standard deviations wide. I'm certain that I, being an untutored schmuck from Pittsburgh and having thought of this almost immediately after reading about this contest, cannot be the first person to realize this is a potential problem for a forecasting contest. But I can't find anything they've done to mitigate that problem. Can anyone clue me in?

They aren't guessing heads or tails, they give odds for each event. It's more like eyeballing a thousand coins to guess how fair they are, and then flipping each one just once.

Some are weighted to be 99% heads, others are 10% heads etc.

You could have 1,000,000 people guess random percentages for each coin, but suppose 10 of the coins are weighted 100% heads. To guess within 25% of the true value for all 10 of those coins would be roughly 1 in a million.

So a lucky guy guesses within 25% for all 10, he'd have another 990 coins he's being judged on.

I don't understand your analogy. Are you just suggesting that luck plays too large a role in this contest? Clearly there is some "skill" or ability factor because AI's have been scoring higher and higher each year. Also, they make reference to superforecaster humans, who are presumably consistently better at forecasting than their peers.

i'm not looking at the guesses, i'm looking at the distribution of guesser success rates. assuming random distribution, counterintuitively enough, you would expect some guessers to appear much better or much worse than others. i know i'm not the first person to think of this, so i'm asking what's been done to mitigate it because i can't find anything. if you expect x% of guesses to be within two std devs of the mean that means you can expect 100-x% to be outside that, even without any guessers actually being better at guessing than any of the others.

The news cycle was a lot slower, and there’s a chance you wouldn’t be literate enough to read newspapers. I suspect you’d probably just carry on per usual.

Currently, the news cycle is too fast to keep up with and 1 in 5 USian adults are functionally illiterate.

>I suspect you’d probably just carry on per usual.

That's entirely what I'm afraid of

It’s more about the way it was phrased and presented. Just sharing publicly available facts with your community (or anyone really) is not a problem in itself, but the message does rub me the wrong way.

The message’s author is trying to present themselves as someone helpful and compassionate (‘I understand’, ‘I’m trying to help’), but at the same time, they’re one-sidedly setting a firm and short deadline (‘I’ll give you a day’) unprompted and suggesting the café owner strike a deal with one of the people they’re going to recommend. They might have written this with good intentions at heart, but it also wouldn’t feel out of place in a mafia setting (as in ‘do business with us, or else’), so it’s a hard sell.

If they really were compassionate and wanted to help, they easily could have suggested to get the owner in touch with some affordable artists and left her with time to mentally deal with the backlash and all. They didn’t need to emphasise how they were going to tell on her like they were about to launch a vendetta smear campaign or something.

HN needing an explanation of how protection rackets work is like looking up money laundering in the dictionary in Office Space.

I agree, they should've just shared it immediately without contacting the owner

There are no good intentions here. This is the mafia playbook through and through - "It would be a pity if something were to happen to your <insert valuable property or reputation here>".

Well, the basic idea of it is not so bad. A business generally wants to keep their customers happy and care for their reputation, so telling a business when we’re unhappy and influencing their reputation is the feedback mechanism we have at our disposal.

The important thing is how we go about it, and whether their reputation remains reflective of their actions, or we try and make it worse than it ought to be. We can’t say for certain the author of the message was going to do the latter, but it does not inspire good faith.

> Well, the basic idea of it is not so bad.

It's textbook extortion.

> so telling a business when we’re unhappy and influencing their reputation is the feedback mechanism we have at our disposal.

Telling a business we're going to fuck you up unless you send our friends work, even by implication, is literally extortion.

I wrote my comment with the assumption that the ‘basic idea’ was intentionally making reputation worse on account of poor behaviour, and communicating that to the business owner. Of course, if you imagine the basic idea to be the extortive aspect, then it is literally extortion.

Threatening to damage the reputation of the business unless the business paid their friends to redo the art.

It's only not extortion if you ignore the extortative parts.

I did make a distinction between ‘the basic idea’ and the rest. That implies temporarily focusing on some parts more than the others, yes.

but the only way they can "fuck up" this business is by influencing their reputation. no one is getting a brick through their window. this is an attempt to try to mutate basic feedback mechanisms until they're equivalent to physical violence and turn "I won't shop here and neither will my friends" into "literally extortion".

> "A business generally wants to keep their customers happy and care for their reputation, so telling a business when we’re unhappy and influencing their reputation is the feedback mechanism we have at our disposal."

Yes, except this case isn't about a customer—it's a disgruntled vendor (commercial artist) acting on behalf of an association of other vendors. Not (AFAICT) on behalf of real customers.

A customer complaining about their needs and preferences is useful feedback.

A vendor whom you have no business relationship with (and want none) is not helpful.

If they criticize your business practices in public, that's certainly their right. But, if they're threatening to do that, with an attached demand of commercial services to them (or to their associates), that's something else. It's the linked demand for payment that loses them all legitimacy. (Possibly even into criminal racketeering; I'm not an expert).

Certainly, but considerate the alternative: the account simply publicly posts about a public posting (not private business). Which happens all of the time for public ridicule or shame. At least this provides some recourse for the person affected. Sure, the alternative is simply to not post in the first place; but such is the nature of large social media accounts.

the crux of whether or not this is extortion isn't just "something I don't like happens". it's not extortion to dislike a business's practice, and it's not extortion to tell your friends about it. it may be distasteful, maybe even shitty (in fact I'd go so far as to say that even while I agree with the idea I really don't like how they did it) but to criminalize what this person said is to criminalize the idea of not doing business with someone because you don't like their actions and is an attack on free speech.

It's extortion when you tell the business as a conditional statement. Perhaps you're lived a fortunate life as to not have dealt with a mafia gang ever in your sheltered life.

I don’t deny that based on the screenshot there is both strong-arming and a lack of sympathy or empathy from the other account towards the fact that it seems like many people are just using AI tools without giving it a second thought.

However, I’m just pointing out that as far as the implications of the threat goes, in most instances it would’ve just happened anyway, without a “warning”, because people simply post things to make fun of them and mock them. Sometimes those accounts might at least anonymize their subjects, but this might be a name them and shame them type situation.

This is ludicrous, I'm sorry. People are treating this minor social scuffle like they're going to burn the business down. No, they're not saying 'work with us or die' unless you read it in the most hostile way possible to be terrified of something mundane. To them, the AI is the problem, if the owner took it down and replaced it with a Microsoft Word printout, they would be satisfied. Trying to recommend an artist they know may come off as an advertisement or as trying to get ahead of the owner claiming there's no one who can do this kind of work, depending on how charitable you want to be. But no matter how you read it, this isn't a mob boss forcing you into a protection racket. It's just some guy who probably wanted to name and shame on a Facebook group but decided to hold off for one day.

It's an implied threat, which you can infer from the presentation of the information. For example:

You really should listen to me. If you need some time to think it over, I understand. It's a lot to consider and you've got a lot in your plate. I'll check in soon - would tomorrow be okay? If you need more time, just tell me when.

vs

You really should listen to me. I'll give you a day to think it over before I take further action.

Same information, but the latter assumes a position of authority (I, the person in charge, will be the provider of the time you will receive), and then uses that position to provide an ostensible benevolence as a way to mitigate the implied follow up of non-benevolence. The threat is introduced as the power disparity. The person in power has leverage over the less powerful and the threat is that they will use it. Remove the power disparity, and the implication of threat is also removed.

Unions also use the threat of striking as a leverage point against corporations. As I noted elsewhere in this thread, there seems to be a common fallacy in this thread of "threat = bad". Laws are threats too. You need a more convincing argument than this.

Yes, we know labor cartels abuse their powers. Doesn't change the point at hand

My comment is about how inference and implication can change the result of a message just as much as the content or context. Whatever axe you've got to grind about threats being bad has nothing to do with what I said. Laws are threats. Unions make threats. So what? My point stands. Things that are obviously threats are threats, and things that say the same things in different ways might not be threats.

"Threat" is a correct term for an attempt to compel action via potential negative consequences.

By that definition all laws are threats. And indeed, the fallacy here seems to be assuming that threat = bad.

Laws are threats. The difference is that we empower the government to threaten us to maintain social order, we do not empower individuals to threaten each other.

"Nice business you've got here, shame if something happened to it"

Its implied the talk is to rally the troops not gather general opinion

Sharing it with the community could have negative impact on her business. So they were threatening her business success by sharing the info in a certain form with the community.

"treating it as a learning opportunity"

You can learn to pay me, or you can learn the consequences of refusing to pay me. It's your choice of learning opportunity! ;)

In the context of how it was done, saying that they would give them a list of people and a day to think it over, it really is a threat, it's a kind of extortion.

It is worth pointing out that the article doesn’t even imply that the business suffered any negative outcome here (ie damage or loss of sales etc.) It also doesn’t implied that the person threatened that the business might suffer any negative outcome, just that they would talk about the ad that the business made and put out for people to see and share.

This article is very careful not to actually elaborate on what the “threat” might’ve meant because I’d imagine that baselessly speculating out loud about what they imagine it could be would open them up to getting sued.

It’s all just uwu smol bean coffee shop chiropractor bullied by mean anti-ai mob dreck

Search for "but at what cost" and you'll see news companies do it all the time.

You'll find these ridiculous headlines like, "Company cures cancer, but at what cost."

That's not what the "threat" said. It said that they would give them a list of people, it isn't obvious that hiring some random would have made them happy. It's not even obvious whether this wasn't just a convenient way to make some money for a friend.

It comes across as spiteful, I don't think it is at all obvious and it isn't obvious to the store owner either.

We just disagree, and that's why this is the wrong approach to enacting whatever kind of change they wanted.

There is arrogance behind the use of "obviously" here.

Saying you’ll do something that’ll harm someone (or, more precisely in this instance, their business) can reasonably be called a threat (in the broad sense of the word), though not necessarily the unfair kind of threat most people imagine when they say ‘threat’.

You can threaten someone with ceasing to be a customer if they don’t change their business practices, and that’s perfectly fine. Sharing publicly available information is generally not a problem, either. But in this case, the author of the message is coming off as very insincere, setting deadlines, and trying to strike up deals, which comes off as unreasonable and makes one wonder if they really are simply going to share publicly available information, or if they’re going to give undue focus over them being ‘uncooperative’. If they did not want their message to come off as a threat, this was very far from an ideal way to write it.

Can you quote the words in the article where somebody said that the business was or would be hurt

Because if not that would mean that this is an article about a threat that somebody imagined in their head

I think it’s pretty evident that letting ‘other artists’ (or ‘the community’) know implies hurting the business (since they are likely to disappreciate the use of AI, the way many other people have).

Hurt the business in what way specifically?

All we’ve got to go off is a screenshot of a vaguely weird DM. Seeing as the article didn’t mention any type of harm at all, what is the evident harm here?

This is an article on a news website about how somebody got a dm lol, there was never any threat, they would’ve written about it if there was

The very fact they are giving her an ultimatum/deadline holds that implication. At the very least, it would be likely to further the backlash and upset even more people (who oppose this use of AI). Whether they had anything else in mind is not clear, but it’s clear that it was nothing good, otherwise she would have no reason to give in to their demands and the entire captured conversation would be utterly absurd and pointless.

Hey now, these folks are -really enjoying- their highly contrived version of the events. How dare you limit their enjoyment by recontextualizing this into what most of my non-highly-online friends would view as the "normal" understanding.

As a person who went through and eventuall rejected the culture-jamming adbusters thoughts in the early 2000s, it's really hard for me to view a threat to share an ad as anything other than a "threat" to increase the "organic reach of the ad" or whatever "metric" that folks here would use.

I would once again like to point out that the "threat" mentioned in the article is someone saying they'll talk about what the shop owner did with their friends.

"post about it in a local artist community" is not exactly "talk about it with their friends."

It's bullying.

And if the shop owner is Jewish, it would be anti-semitism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws

I consider a boycott threat a non-violent threat; legal but an exercise of power that has moral dimensions.

Imagine if it said "post about it on Hacker News". That's not bullying

It's informing people that there is something a business is doing that they might not approve of and they might want to change their behaviour accordingly.

In the same way that sealioning is just a debate strategy.

if i'm expected to make coffee and art then it's perfectly reasonable to expect more money than if I'm merely expected to make coffee. whether that comes as part of base salary or as some contract-esque arrangement when art is required of me is the kind of detail we can figure out (or you can try to do it with AI and have a lot of people stop supporting you. your call.)

the only "threat" mentioned in the article is that someone said that if she didn't take the sign down they would post about it in a local artist community. Threatening people with violence is always unwarranted, but trying to portray talking with other people about what someone is doing as a "threat" is disingenuous.

I think that issuing an ultimatum where if the person does not do what you want, that you will be sharing your concerns with likeminded people online, with the underlying implication being that the business owner will end up experiencing some kind of negative outcome from that, is absolutely a threat.

Exactly. Pure cancel culture. Just be humble to understand the world might not agree with your views and let it be. Less "this can't exist" and more of "this is not for me".

It's not cancel culture to bad-mouth a business and refuse them your patronage.

People are vocal about what they feel passionate about, and a world where they weren't or couldn't sounds hellish to me. How would society ever progress? We'd still have "whites only" restaurants in that world.

Not saying that justifies all anger targeted at business owners, but a blanket "criticism bad" stance is a bit silly. You have to make an actual argument as to why you think the anti-AI crowd is misguided in this case.

Cancel culture or not, people are allowed to tell other people they know that something is happening, and those people can decide for themselves to patronize the business or not. To call it a threat is really exaggerating.

The headline makes it sound like people are phoning in bomb threats and violence, which doesn't seem to be happening at all.

Honestly, I think the business owner should have ignored these weak "threats" altogether. It doesn't have anything to do with coffee and it's unlikely they'll get any business because they use AI, so it can only hurt them.

I get you think the word is too heavy but remember: it's a small business and bad press is a serious thing. It could be enough to shut down the place. Just see how afraid local shop owners are of Yelp. You get review bombed there and you have a serious problem. You don't know if these artists won't just unload their (just) frustration at AI on the business exactly like that. By judging the tone "change or I'll tell the artists", it's very likely the person would try to incite them instead of just "telling" them.

If the Montgomery Bus Boycott happened today most Americans would call it cancel culture.

Okay, but I (and I suspect a lot of people) really don't care if somebody is threatened in that way. If the business person doesn't want other people to know what they're doing then maybe they shouldn't do it. It's not worthy of a news article, IMO.

If somebody threatens them with violence (which is what "threat" is usually implying) then that's a different thing entirely.

If I tell someone that I am going to take a coordinated effort to undermine their business and get customers to stop shopping there, potentially resulting in the demise of the business, the loss of their livelihood and ability to provide for themselves or their family, I cannot think of any reasonable person who would not categorize that as a threat. A threat by no means is limited to violence only.

I am really disturbed by language minimizes concrete actions taken to cause harm.

"I am not hurting your business I am just talking to my friends!"

If the "business owner needs to own their actions", shouldn't the people who are seeking to take a coordinated effort to harm that business also "own their actions" and be able to say plainly what they are doing instead of misrepresenting it via "Stop being crazy, I'm not making threats, I'm just talking to my friends" gaslighting nonsense?

> If the shop's oat milk was really cow's milk, would it be "threatening their business" to tell other customers that?

To entertain this analogy, if a shop is misrepresenting their ingredients then it can make sense to spread the word, particularly if the shop owner refuses to rectify the issue, because there are health implications which represent a legitimate material harm to their customer base and the safety issue takes priority over the shop owner's bottom line.

An AI menu, assuming it offers a reasonable representation of what the shop offers, has no safety issue.

AI stealing their jobs isn't a "legitimate material harm"?

It doesn't matter anyway, because "using AI" doesn't make somebody a protected class. If people don't want to patronize businesses that use AI, there's nothing wrong with that.

> AI stealing their jobs isn't a "legitimate material harm"?

No, if you have to make several indirect causal leaps, to get from "shop owner uses ChatGPT instead of MS Word to generate a menu" to "somewhere a graphic designer loses their employment" it is not legitimate. And if that is how you interpret the world, virtually any harmful or even violent action can be rationalized in the name of stopping some probabilistic harm.

Sticking with your cow's milk analogy, serving the wrong milk to the wrong customer with a dairy allergy can cause immediate harm to their health. Generating an AI menu cannot be reasonably interpreted as causing direct harm to anyone.

> If people don't want to patronize businesses that use AI, there's nothing wrong with that.

I completely agree. But making a personal choice to not visit a business and undertaking a coordinated effort to organize a boycott against a business is in a different category altogether.

Did you not read the article? She was unaware of the controversy and had just had a baby - which tends to be quite a stressful and time consuming thing.

The milk comparison is specious and irrelevant, because consumers are there for the product. Coffee shops sell coffee, not jpegs.

But aside from that - bullying and threatening a working mother with a newborn is not the moral high ground you seem to believe it is.

She's not a witch, and your assumed right to burn her is not a good look.

"It would be a pity if I were to tarnish jlarocco's reputation within my network. I even have his GitHub from his profile. I'll just talk shit about him to all the CTOs on the block and ensure he doesn't get a job again..."

See how that works? That's why you should care. The so-called influencer-orienter culture has become a plague after social media. And these F&B businesses are the ones hit hardest - remember all those movies in the 90s and 00s about how some up and coming entrepreneur or chef had to win the approval of some hoity-toity food journalist?

Also, rest assured, I'm not serious about badmouthing you or anyone here for that matter - just trying to illustrate a point.

Oh, I get it, but it only works if the "influencer" can actually influence a large enough group of customers, and my bet is that they can't.

If it were me, I would have called their bluff and ignored them.

In that analogy, you SHOULD assume the person is an influencer.

In the case of this shop, we're talking about local retail. If you are a retail small business owner you have to assume that any customer can be an "influencer" and cause significant harm if they seek to trash your business online.

To be fair to the news, there probably wasn't much else happening in Buffalo NY

Oh, please. You know what they're threatening: an internet mob. That's not just "talking".

As a rule, small business owners (as well as HN's population of temporarily embarrassed tech workers) treats being asked to not take as much profit as possible like being stabbed with a knife

keep trying to listen to Negativland but then my mind just turns to Pepsi, and I couldn't tell you why...