46 comments
I'm very impressed that even in time of war, when one's bare necessities are not met and explosive devices are flying over one's head, everything is done to make the internet -and by extension, ironically, the world- a worse place to be.
But let's keep pumping these fake engagement numbers up boys! This is fine.
Foreign dollars buy foreign goods. When your country is on fire, you have to look outside for stuff like food and weapons. The ethical lines move pretty far when facing starvation.
> We now continue to work as before, getting social media engagement for us and our clients, applying to YC 2026 and other VCs.
Why would YC fund a clickfarm? Besides that, there's something frustrating about these people setting up emergency infrastructure specifically to profit off making the internet worse.
I respect the hustle but I hate the idea.
> Next thing you need is some way to convert 12V DC battery voltage to 230V AC mains voltage to power common devices like servers.
But the server and phones use 12V/5V DC. Why the extra step of DC 12V (inverter) -> AC 220V (server PSU) -> DC 12/5V ?
Because, it is much easier to buy a cheap 230V AC inverter and plug it into your server power supply than it is to make a bespoke power supply that takes 12V and distributes it to various components. Inverters are stupid cheap right now, and 90%+ efficient.
For folks outside of warzones with plenty of time and access to international shipping (i.e. not OP), there are off-the-shelf adapters that accept DC input and produce the ATX voltage rails with the proper motherboard plug. Search for "DC-ATX" or "PicoPSU", they're pretty neat devices using DC-to-DC converters.
> Large grocery stores and apartment buildings use big generators, they are the size of a car and way quieter than small generators.
Many industrial generators are enclosed in a box that absorbs most of the noise, unlike the smaller ones.
The big ones are also diesel, run at different RPM. ~3500 RPM For the smalle gas ones and around 1800 RPM for the big diesel ones. The noise characteristcs are also different. The big diesels produce more low frequency noise, whereas the small gas generators are literally lawn mower / leaf blower engines and sound the same.
The enclosures of the big generators remove mainly lower frequency sound, making them perceptually even quieter.
Bombs are falling on your head and you still have the time to spam. Well done.
Anything that brings foreign cash into the country during a war is important. Foreign dollars can be used to purchase foreign supplies and weapons.
"We now continue to work as before, getting social media engagement for us and our clients, applying to YC 2026 and other VCs."
Ehh, so this is a click farm?
At this point, is the most "effective ethical" career path for a software developer to work on LLMs to flood social media and ad-clicks to speedrun the collapse of digital marketing? And thus freeing competent but money-driven software engineers to work on something else?
By collapse of digital marketing you mean collapse of social networks?
I cannot say I would miss them, but I doubt it will solve the problem.
Because yes, software engineers would love to work on many interesting things. But they also love being able to buy food and pay rent.
If the ad companies don't pay money anymore, who will replace them?
(I still dream of a world with donation for free services as default, but I am usually not taken serious with this.)
And .. about ad companies and LLMs - I think the madness just started. Once the marketing companies get their product placements directly into the models and the agents sophisticated enough, that you cannot trust anything posted online anymore, it will just destroy anonymous communication, as you cannot trust any anonymous account anymore at all. And will have a hard time finding out who is, who they say they are.
That's one of opening points of Dodge in Hell by Neil Stephenson.
Yeah now we know why it’s on the front page not even 10 minutes after posting…
Check out the guy's social media (links in the original article). The shit is downright hilarious. He's very self-conscious about how horrible his business is.
I just started watching Pluribus, so this one got a laugh out of me:
With only 60 phones, this is like a click homestead.
> We help startups get attention with automated social media marketing on physical phones.
Combining what Ukraine is known for, kicking Russian ass and creating shady software
What a rollercoaster to arrive at that in the end
Click farms effectively function as janitors, mopping up spam someone else paid to throw so that no real user stumbles upon it, so they are beneficial.
It’s computer fraud by the operator and wire fraud by the client…
> Your own army of physical phones in just a few clicks
From a project page linked from the original post.
Yes
"I saw the best minds of my generation..."
"10 out of 10, I love this founder"
> Ehh, so this is a click farm?
No no no, it's far worse than that, it's a bot farm.
Has there been any significant use of decentralized mesh communication networks in Ukraine in the last years?
To limited extend by Ukrainian army, more like a fallback method if something happens to Startlink. Mesh networks are getting used more and more by Russian army for coordinating drone attacks and surveillance - they use Chinese modems e.g. 70M-6Ghz/Uper C-X-Ku).
AFAIK a lot of military gear works over mesh networks.
I love the ingenuity of this, truly in the hacker spirit! I also lol'd at how fast this got onto the FP given what these guys do, jolly good show gents! Well Played.
How inspiring. In a war torn country, a man perseveres and continues making the internet worse.
The founder's LinkedIn describes his job as "Automating phones for you - Dead internet as a service", and also has a post where he proudly states that this post was "banned on Hacker News", so I don't doubt that he's abusing the phones here too.
It isn't a click farm, it's a bot farm.
If you check out the man's social media, the hilarious part is that he is not even trying to sugar coat it in anyway. It's like: "yup, I'm ruining your internet, what are you gonna do about it?"
Can you give some examples on what are these people specifically doing with all these phones for those unfamiliar with click farms?
Creating accounts on every service they can think of, and then selling likes or favorites or whatever that platform uses.
hate the game not the player
[dead]
Слава Україні!
> There even was an official program to replace your old lightbulb for a new LED one for free
Wow do they still have incandescent lightbulbs? Mental.
That depends on what the source of your heating is.
Say, in Norway we largely use (hydro-) electric power for heating, anyway.
So, the 2% efficient (for lighting) incandescent bulb doubles as a 98% efficient space heater, utilizing the 2% loss to light said space. 100% efficient!
No, since the domestic heating is done mostly by heat pump, which is above 250% efficient by comparison.