Yes, it fell off the front page but it's this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46243311

Gotta have the digital laugh track analogue to show people how to react.

(I'm not kidding, a ton of people will watch e.g. movie trailers or live streamed events through one of many reaction streamers so they get prompted on how to feel. I hated laugh tracks back then, I hate reaction streamers now, let me have my own feelings!)

MIND BLOWING DISCOVERY CREATES INFINITE ENERGY AND CURES CANCER at least 10x a day.

* Disclaimer: in mice, of course.

What's actually mind-blowing is how mice aren't already living till an age of 100. I mean, they've literally cured cancer, what's your excuse now, huh?

No dementia, no osteoporosis, more muscled. Every single white mouse in the world should be Mighty Mouse.

...GONE SEXUAL!

But more seriously, get off youtube or curate your stream if this is a common thing. I thankfully don't get it much myself.

Actual HN headlines should be the actual headlines of the linked articles, what actual examples are you thinking of though?

Perhaps the ones that are clickbait in the original?

Exactly. Clickbait, even if it's a bit less blatant, is still common place on hacker news.

Not necessarily, it can be done on-device, the screenshot hashed, and the results deduplicated and accumulated over time, then compressed and sent off in a neat package. It'd still be a huge amount of data when you add it all up, but not too different from the volume that e.g. web analytics produces.

Then server-side the hash is matched to a program or ad and the data accumulated and reduced even further before ending up in someone's analytics dashboard.

> accusing them of “secretly recording what consumers watch in their own homes.”

Secret? There's T's&C's that people agree to when starting up their TV that tells them.

That doesn't make it right of course and it shouldn't just be opt-in, it should be banned entirely. If you want to analyse my viewing behaviour, pay me.

I would be curious to see a comparison of the T&Cs in these TVs.

I generally agree that reading the T&C is on the user and you cannot blame the lack if transparency onto the company, IF the T&C are sufficiently comprehensible. Some T&Cs I‘ve read are written in obscure enough legalese that it might as well be considered hidden information

So you buy a new TV, unpack and install it, and then when the whole family is gathered around, you suddenly get this confirmation on the TV if you agree with their T&C. Are you supposed to reject them and return the TV at this point? T&C should be part of the purchase agreement, instead of being forced upon the user while using the product after purchase. Any one-sided change of T&C after purchase should be invalid and punishable.

It's secret because they don't tell you exactly what they record and how. Can you?

Loads of things, but the big thing that changed in past decades is the media. A case of a child getting abducted or killed goes nation- or worldwide now, which makes everyone feel less safe in letting their kids roam free.

Not to mentions calls to weaken child labour laws in certain states to try and make up the difference in abducted workers: https://www.epi.org/publication/child-labor-standards-state-...

We were ahead of the curve in having our attention spans hijacked by infinite content. This article is from 2003 (but has been updated over time, as e.g. Spotify and Slack came out later) and was already a warning: https://randsinrepose.com/archives/nadd/

edit: ah finally; through another HN comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=528944) I was able to find the original link to the article (http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2003/07/10/nadd.html) and an archived version of the first version (https://web.archive.org/web/20031008160117/http://www.randsi...). Notably, the list of activities changed:

2003 version:

> Me, I've got a terminal session open to a chat room, I'm listening to music, I've got Safari open with three tabs open where I'm watching Blogshares, tinkering with a web site, and looking at weekend movie returns. Not done yet. I've got iChat open, ESPN.COM is downloading sports new trailers in the background, and I've got two notepads open where I'm capturing random thoughts for later integration into various to do lists. Oh yeah, I'm writing this column, as well.

Current version:

> Me, I’ve got Slack opened and logged into four different teams, I’m listening to music in Spotify, I’ve got Chrome open with three tabs where I’m watching stocks on E*TRADE, I’m tinkering with WordPress, and I’m looking at weekend movie returns. Not done yet. I’ve got iMessage open, Tweetbot is merrily streaming the latest fortune cookies from friends, and I’ve got two Sublime windows open where I’m capturing random thoughts for later integration into various to-do lists. Oh yeah, I’m rewriting this article as well.

We were ahead of the curve in getting our attentions spans hijacked.... and yet most of us work in fields where we must maintain attention for long periods of time?

Maybe, just maybe, it's possible to integrate technology into one's life without it being detrimental?

Also those examples don't really paint the picture you think it does. Currently, I have about 200 browser tabs open, Sublime Text, several games, Docker containers, and a bunch of other stuff.

That doesn't mean I'm doing all those things at once, or within a very short period of time.