[HN Gopher] A math tutor teaching calculus on Pornhub
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A math tutor teaching calculus on Pornhub
Author : onychomys
Score : 76 points
Date : 2021-10-20 19:03 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (melmagazine.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (melmagazine.com)
| tombert wrote:
| I always wondered if you could exploit the niche and largely-
| uncensored nature of Pornhub to share "whatever you want",
| particularly if you don't care if your work is monetized. I tend
| to have a fairly dark sense of humor, and while I don't think I
| would say anything that would get me banned from YouTube, it
| would also be interesting to completely avoid any kind of
| worrying about violating a TOS.
| gremloni wrote:
| You don't have to wonder. That paradigm has come and gone. It
| was basically a meme for a long time. It died when pornhub
| decided to purge all their user uploaded content about half a
| year ago.
| gtf21 wrote:
| "Decided to purge" because they had constantly ignored pleas
| to remove abusive and/or illegal content from their platform
| and were in danger of attention from the judicial arm of the
| state?
| formerly_proven wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_Cry
| fourtrees wrote:
| I wonder if they've read that part of the bible where the
| madam in Jericho saves the Jewish spies using her brothel
| as a safehouse and thereby helps facilitate the capture
| of the city.
| gremloni wrote:
| I don't believe a small minority of content should effect
| an action on 99.9% of all content uploaded.
| gambiting wrote:
| From what I understand PornHub actually has more strict user
| verification than YouTube for uploads, so no, that would be a
| really bad place for it. Now, a place like motherless, with
| only a marginal amount of moderation to filter out the illegal
| stuff....maybe.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| The OP wants to avoid censorship. They did not mention
| wanting anonymity.
|
| For example I used to shoot a lot of artistic nude
| photography. I published the work under my own name.
|
| I had no desire to hide my name, and thus my primary concern
| were using platforms that allowed my content.
|
| Now of course some people will want to publish their work
| anonymously. But free speech does not require anonymity.
| gambiting wrote:
| Yes, but if you get banned for uploading copyrighted
| content on PH once then you're banned for life as opening
| another account and verifying it would be very hard.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Perhaps we differ on the meaning of free speech, but I do
| not believe copyright itself is a violation of the spirit
| off free speech. In a sense copyright can be seen as
| enabling more free speech, since it enables people the
| opportunity to support themselves through artistic &
| intellectual pursuits that would otherwise be
| unprofitable without copyright protections.
| gambiting wrote:
| Well, copyright is just an example of things they could
| still ban you for. My point is that any ban for any
| reason on PH is much worse in consequence than a ban on
| YT, because the strong user verification means you won't
| be able to upload ever again. Posting political videos
| from any side would get you banned too, and I'm sure that
| fits your definition of free speech
| everyone wrote:
| Anything you post can still get taken down for any reason. Eg.
| In 2020 credit card companies were worried about CP on it, so
| Pornhub nuked their own site, removing _every_ video from
| _every_ 'unverified' user. The majority of the content.
|
| "The changes took the number of videos on the website from 13.5
| million videos down to a little under 3 million."
|
| https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/15/business/pornhub-videos-r...
| tombert wrote:
| Fair enough! I guess it's good that I didn't post anything on
| there, I guess my comment was just my (poorly thought out)
| thought experiment.
| hehetrthrthrjn wrote:
| "It's OK mom I'm studying calculus"
| jimt1234 wrote:
| "Your father's been 'studying' a lot lately, too."
| irrational wrote:
| "Yeah, Dad says you were a lot more helpful with this kind of
| stuff before you got married."
| khazhoux wrote:
| "I learned it from you, dad!"
| mcphage wrote:
| "...I learned it from watching [what] you [were watching]!"
| trav4225 wrote:
| https://youtu.be/KUXb7do9C-w :-)
| khazhoux wrote:
| The memes we grew up with
| tanseydavid wrote:
| This is like a faint callback-reference to a Robin Williams
| stand-up bit which called Viagra a pill that would make you
| "harder than Chinese Algebra".
| gotostatement wrote:
| wtf is chinese algebra
| ajford wrote:
| You thought solving for X was hard... wait till you're
| solving for Ni Hao !
|
| I doubt there's much behind the joke beyond the stereotype of
| "Asians being good at math", tbh.
|
| My Algebra teacher in school once solved a system of
| equations on the board using the Batman logo/symbol, a Peace
| sign, and a happy face. Just to illustrate the concept of
| variables since a few people were having issues grokking the
| concept.
| micah94 wrote:
| you know...like chinese is hard. And algebra is hard. Put
| them both together, it's double hard.
| martincmartin wrote:
| I thought that was a Tom Waits song, "Pasties and a G-String."
| ramesh31 wrote:
| The web badly needs a video site on the scale of Youtube that
| isn't beholden to the nonsense puritanical values of big tech.
| Still keep it free of anything illegal or copyright infringing,
| but allow people to do whatever they want otherwise. Pornhub is
| in a great spot where they could rebrand and do this.
| jedimastert wrote:
| > nonsense puritanical values of big tech
|
| I don't think it's "big tech" that has these issues. Pornhub is
| big tech too...
|
| The problem is that you have you walk on egg shells for
| anything that could come even remotely close to children, and
| really a lot of the American (even though they may like to
| think otherwise) a not-insignificant portion of the European
| market will give absolutely credence to anything that doesn't
| explicitly ban sexual things.
|
| Look at what happened to OnlyFans. That wasn't big tech, that
| was the financial institutions, and the same group that did
| that is targeting Pornhub next.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _the same group that did that is targeting Pornhub next_
|
| I thought they already _did_ target pornhub, which is what
| led to a big purge of content from Pornhub:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/12/visa-
| mastercard-...
|
| Are they coming back for more?
| goodpoint wrote:
| > nonsense puritanical values
|
| Such as?
| rtsil wrote:
| Facebook removing images of Courbet's painting L'Origine du
| Monde, the Venus of Willendorf, or Youtube restricting a
| videoclip from Brassens' Les Passantes to 18+ viewers.
|
| All perfect examples of nonsense puritanical values that Big
| Tech applies indiscriminately regardless of the audience's
| values.
|
| And sure, in these examples they backtracked, but only
| because these created massive negative buzzes, but what about
| all the other cases that didn't trend on Twitter or made the
| frontpage news?
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > The web badly needs a video site on the scale of Youtube that
| isn't beholden to the nonsense puritanical values of big tech.
|
| Are you objecting to YouTube's content being restricted by _any
| value system whatsoever_ , or just Puritanical values in
| particular?
|
| I'm just trying to understand your point. Definitely an
| interesting topic either way.
| fullshark wrote:
| What content is not on youtube other than pornography that you
| can chalk up to Puritanism?
| josefresco wrote:
| There's D.Tube and PeerTube
| joe_the_user wrote:
| I'd find it more interesting if they did more an "expand
| brand". Playboy Magazine back in the day had both porn and
| substantial reporting. "Sure and I bet you Playboy for the
| interviews" was a standard wisecrack. Porn is incredibly
| profitable and they probably couldn't get more money featuring
| non-porn content. But they could gain credibility if they
| became a safe harbor for worthwhile content unfairly harassed
| by youtube.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| The problem isn't the site as much as it is puritanical
| society. As soon as the site moves towards more diverse content
| that isn't porn they start to smell the ad-dollars which come
| with the puritanism.
|
| Exactly what (almost) happened to Onlyfans once they attempted
| to pivot towards non-adult content.
| muaytimbo wrote:
| This guy is a legend.
| daly wrote:
| Compute the area under this curve...
| Gosbxv wrote:
| Just curious, how many people here have been taught calculus and
| never used it? Upvote if you put your hand up.
| forinti wrote:
| I wonder how many people could have used it and just didn't
| realise it was the tool they needed.
| handrous wrote:
| I really do wonder sometimes if a series of "recognizing
| which kind of math you need to google" courses would be more
| useful for _the vast majority of people_ than traditional
| math courses are, past elementary school.
|
| [EDIT] Making the later high school math classes and early
| university math classes focus entirely on practical
| application might also be a good idea. I have a feeling it
| would turn off ~0% people who will eventually become
| mathematicians, and then the other 200 people in that one
| mathematician's graduating high school class might actually
| _use_ what they learned every now and then, once out of
| school.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Isn't that what calculus (the math course) is?
|
| I mean, I don't recall the exact recipe for most calculus
| operations, even though I spent hours in college learning
| them. But I do know that I can build a taylor series* to
| approximate certain functions, and that it will be pretty
| quick and have a bounded error.
|
| * Use Wolfram Alpha
| handrous wrote:
| Most math classes are _kinda_ that, but you could get a
| lot more covered if you focused more on "here's a real
| world problem, 1) what sorts of math do you need to solve
| it? 2) OK, now solve it and apply the result (you may use
| the Web, calculators, apps, whatever)" than "here's how
| you mechanically follow through with that".
| handrous wrote:
| I'm not sure I've ever used anything more complex than Algebra
| 1 from IIRC freshman year of high school. Ever. Certainly I'm
| more likely to go beyond that doing house projects, than at
| work.
|
| I think I've used trig once or twice for house projects, but by
| "used" I mean "plugged some numbers into the relevant
| calculator, without needing to actually know the formula", and
| if that counts I guess I also do advanced cryptography and all
| kinds of other crazy stuff daily, like when I used GPS or
| access a web page over SSL.
|
| _Far and away_ the most useful math I was taught in school was
| the memorization of basic "math facts" (e.g. multiplication
| tables), including and especially the ability to do mental math
| with fractions and percentages. This is the stuff (rote
| memorization) that professional mathematicians seem to hate and
| want to get rid of or downplay, even calling it "not actually
| math" et c. Easily the best use of my time in any math class,
| ever, though I didn't know it at the time.
|
| As far as any utility it had in "shaping my mind", my four
| semesters of college French were _at least_ as useful for that
| as my... oh, I dunno, 28 semesters of math? Youtube and reading
| blogs has been more useful for developing my mind in the way
| people usually mean when they say that 's what learning math's
| good for, even if you don't use it. I also never use that
| [edit: the French, I mean] unfortunately, so like math, I've
| lost almost all of it.
|
| I'd guess 99% of the math I use in a given year could be done
| by an average 5th grader. Every now and then I take a stab at
| (re-)learning some math, but it's just so hard to justify the
| time. What am I going to do with it, really, unless I put in
| thousands of study-hours to get _really_ good at some niche?
| Nothing. So I usually end up distracted by some fun-but-not-
| enlightening recreational math, which is fine, but about as
| improving as solving Sudoku puzzles.
|
| Paid software developer since age 15, BS degree in computer
| science, approaching age 40.
| tombert wrote:
| > This is the stuff (rote memorization) that professional
| mathematicians seem to hate and want to get rid of or
| downplay, even calling it "not actually math"
|
| I'm not a mathematician, but my understanding of them saying
| that is because that's more _computation_ than mathematical
| thinking. You 're not getting an understanding of what's
| actually happening when you've memorized 4x5=20, all you're
| doing is creating basic word-mapping.
|
| Maybe I just lived a very different life, but even though I'm
| reasonably good with my times tables, I still almost always
| use a calculator/spreadsheet/spotlight/phone to do all but
| the most basic of computations. Why wouldn't I? I always have
| a supercomputer in my pocket that is substantially more
| likely to be correct than a twenty year old memory of fourth
| grade.
|
| > I'd guess 99% of the math I use in a given year could be
| done by an average 5th grader.
|
| I don't mean to come off as a jerk, but I guess I'm just
| going to say it; in the 25 years you've been a developer,
| have you not tried to make a game? Some machine learning?
| Data science?
|
| I'm not saying you need to be the next Guass or anything, but
| all of those require more advanced math than what I was
| taught in fifth grade. To make a platformer game, you have to
| know enough to do a basic Euler integration. To do machine
| learning, you have to know enough to _at least_ know what a
| Sigmoid is [1]. To do data science, you have to understand
| basic statistical methods (E.g. ANOVA, Chi Squared, Student T
| Tests). Maybe you were taught all this stuff in fifth grade,
| but I don 't think that the majority of students where.
|
| [1] I don't do machine learning for a living, I know that the
| Sigmoid has fallen out of favor but I think my point still
| stands.
| handrous wrote:
| > I don't mean to come off as a jerk, but I guess I'm just
| going to say it; in the 25 years you've been a developer,
| have you not tried to make a game?
|
| Yes! But there are lots of kinds of games, and none of my
| attempts were in 3d or involved physics. Also I've learned
| that without real users beating down my door for a feature
| I _will not ever_ finish a project, so I 've given up on
| "fun" coding entirely and haven't written any kind of game
| whatsoever in probably 15+ years. It's a waste of time for
| me, as I _will not_ finish it. I need a _guaranteed_
| smiling face at the end of the process, or there 's no
| chance I'll get far. If I decided I _really_ wanted to make
| a game these days, unless unusual physics were vital to it,
| I 'd probably let an existing engine take care of all that
| for me--why would I code it from scratch, when the point is
| to have a finished game, not _manually write_ as much of it
| as possible at the expense of making it take longer?
|
| > Some machine learning?
|
| Never had a reason. I'll learn it if I ever have one. My
| usual approach to anything a whole bunch of people are
| doing, but I'm not, is to assume that some of them _must
| be_ idiots, and they 're doing OK, so, since I'm an idiot,
| I'll pick it up just fine, too--if I ever need to. This
| approach has yet to fail me. I've yet to try to do
| something new that lots of other people are doing and found
| that no, in fact I'm too dumb to pick it up pretty fast.
|
| See above about needing someone who wants the output of my
| work, before I can reliably finish projects. There's no way
| I'm going to complete a "learning project" in machine
| learning, for its own sake, unless I'm just _very_
| interested in whatever 's being learned--and I just don't
| really care that much about machine learning. I get the
| gist, so it's not some big mystery to me how it works, OK,
| that's neat. I'll dig deeper if I ever have even the
| _slightest_ reason to. Just haven 't yet.
|
| > Data science?
|
| Not done anything interesting, or "real" data science.
| Fixing up data, yes. Doing very simple math on it, sure. If
| I ever knew what any of these: "ANOVA, Chi Squared, Student
| T Tests" are I've long since forgotten. Certainly never
| used any.
| abecedarius wrote:
| > To make a platformer game, you have to know enough to do
| a basic Euler integration.
|
| I coded that kind of stuff when I was like 12, in BASIC,
| with no idea about integration as far as I can remember
| now. I think I'd read about simulating a bouncing ball in a
| basic programming book somewhere? This did help with
| getting the ideas about calculus later.
|
| Added:
| http://www.vpri.org/pdf/hc_pers_comp_for_children.pdf has a
| more detailed scenario of kids coding Euler integration
| without knowing it's called that.
| short12 wrote:
| > I don't mean to come off as a jerk, but I guess I'm just
| going to say it; in the 25 years you've been a developer,
| have you not tried to make a game?
|
| Similar situation as GP and I have never made a game.
| Simply because it doesn't interest me in the slightest
| louisvgchi wrote:
| You don't need to know about integration to make a
| platformer. That's an absurd thing to say. I think this is
| called gatekeeping. "You couldn't possibly participate in X
| without first having these credentials that I specify."
| stocknoob wrote:
| https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/why-i-couldn39t-be-a-math-...
| abd888 wrote:
| It is a bit outdated. Its useful only on certain optimization
| problems that in the real world get solved with simpler
| methods.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| In what universe is goddamn CALCULUS outdated. As long the
| reality consists of things changing in relation to other
| things, it remains modern.
| onychomys wrote:
| Well, it's now pretty easy to get really close to a
| continuous answer by using discrete steps in a computer. If
| you need to get the area under a curve by breaking it into
| a billion tiny rectangles, so what, your computer will do
| that calculation in a second or two.
|
| (...that being said, calculus is a lot more than just a way
| to calculate, it's a whole method of thinking of the world,
| and that's clearly not outdated quite yet)
| nybble41 wrote:
| > If you need to get the area under a curve by breaking
| it into a billion tiny rectangles, so what, your computer
| will do that calculation in a second or two.
|
| That, too, is calculus. However, a closed-form solution
| will always be preferred--"a second or two" might be
| acceptable if you're only evaluating the function once,
| but it's clearly not good enough when you're applying it
| to a large data set. We may all be carrying around
| supercomputers in our pockets but we're still well short
| of the point where that kind of optimization wouldn't
| lead to a noticeable increase in both performance and
| (practical) functionality.
| pfisherman wrote:
| Eh... it's pretty useful if you want to do deep learning. I
| would also consider a strong facility with concepts like of
| rates of change / derivatives and aggregation / integration to
| be a an important practical skill.
|
| Imo, they we should be teaching basic linear algebra before
| calculus. Multiplying vectors and matrices by hand gives a very
| good feel for how integrals work.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| My need for it has waned and waxed over my career and life:
|
| - Understanding the ideas behind derivatives / gradients and
| integrals has let me grasp some basic concepts regarding
| physical systems and regarding money.
|
| - I've helped some physicists turn their ideas into C++ code,
| and knowing a little calculus narrowed the communications gap.
|
| - In deep learning systems, if I didn't already know some basic
| calculus, understanding auto-differentiation and back-
| propagation would have seemed like an insurmountable challenge.
| hooande wrote:
| I don't think that any of these benefits are worth the number
| of hours that people are asked to spend studying calculus
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| The benefits that _I personally_ have reaped from studying
| calculus justify the time and effort that _I personally_
| have invested.
|
| I'm not qualified to guess how universal my experience is.
| pjbeam wrote:
| I personally enjoyed analysis for its own sake. The calc
| sequence was a bit silly, like a cookbook, but there are
| some cool ideas in there that I still enjoy thinking about.
| Math maturity that came out of that (and others, especially
| number theory) has served me well as a conceptual framework
| in all kinds of disparate areas of my life.
| digitalsushi wrote:
| Learning calculus forced me to learn how to learn, which I use
| everyday. Maybe something else would have eventually taught me
| how to learn, but for me, calculus was my first experience of
| being able to tell myself I was right instead of relying on
| someone else to tell me I was right.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Learning calculus also taught me that it is possible for me
| to learn something that isn't "obvious" as soon as I see it
| and that if I try hard enough, I _can_ understand something I
| don 't think I can understand rather than giving up
| immediately because it's hard.
| waterhouse wrote:
| I used it once in financial projections at work: assuming the
| customer base would continue to double every six months, and
| that each customer generated data at a constant rate, and using
| integration to compute the total storage needed. I might have
| also used it when taking depreciation and inflation into
| account.
|
| Technically, though, I learned that calculus from a textbook,
| rather than by being taught.
| chmod775 wrote:
| That's a weird thing to ask on a site full of software
| developers, even if most people here probably spend their time
| writing some angular or react site that's a thin layer over a
| mongodb database and has hardly any 'meat' to it.
|
| If you haven't used something from calculus (or other branch of
| mathematics beyond grade school stuff) in this sector, you've
| either been avoiding it or had others do the work for you on
| stackoverflow or something.
|
| You can't even have big O notation without calculus.
| mywittyname wrote:
| It's not an everyday thing for me, but I've made frequent use
| of series and differentiation in my career and worked with
| people who used it for a living.
|
| It depends on what you do. One will absolutely run into calc
| doing any sort of scientific computing, simulations, signal
| processing, machine learning, or graphics programming. But you
| can absolutely make a good living in software knowing no
| calculus.
| tombert wrote:
| Ok, I'll bite.
|
| I find these questions a bit strange, because it sort of misses
| the point of learning as a whole. Do I use Civil War history
| every day? No, probably not, but I also don't regret being
| taught it at school. Am I conducting a lot of chemical
| experiments? No, but I think it's valid for me to have learned
| chemistry in high school. Am I performing literary analysis on
| everything I consume? Well, yes, but that's just something I do
| for fun, it's not like people are paying me for it.
|
| The reason that they teach calculus is two fold. First, most of
| this stuff is somewhat additive. Do you use "calculus" every
| day? Probably not, but having learned calculus might make other
| aspects of math or programming easier, stuff that you might end
| up using full time.
|
| Second, the people designing programs for Computer Science
| degrees (and probably others as well) at some level need to
| have a "one size fits all" for their students. My professor
| doesn't know if I'm going to get a job doing video game
| physics, if I'm going to designing video compression filters,
| or if I'm going to be a web developer, but they want to make
| sure that if I graduate with a CS degree, I am more or less
| qualified for most reasonable software engineering positions,
| or least given the tools to _become_ qualified.
|
| We could extrapolate this logic further: how many people here
| are realistically writing low-level C code? I know I'm not, but
| I don't regret them teaching me how it's done, it informs my
| high-level code writing.
| gjs278 wrote:
| maybe they should have taught you brevity as well
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