ethbro

As far as I can remember, "This is capitalism, baby!" didn't play quite so well with the latter crowd.

Then again, free trade and outsourcing did. So maybe Uber's new plan is to complain about the cost of US workers and hire remote drivers in lower CoL nations?

So whether it's an external acquisition or internal project is somewhat immaterial.

Government concerned about shortages + wasted N95 masks by untrained public -> recommendation against the public wearing masks -> additional evidence for airborne & asymptomatic transmission / opportunity to ramp mask production -> "I heard we recommended against the public wearing masks, so I guess we don't need to do that"

To be fair, there are tons of valid reasons not to allocate scarce masks to the general public (economic panic, inability to properly fit test, inability to properly wear, no decon procedures or facilities, likelihood of proximity to Covid-positive patient). But unfortunately, it seems like the actual rationale (and suggestions it would have for subsequent action) got lost in the simplification, even on the government itself.

The distinction (whether intended in Gates' source or of my own mind) I find interesting is between veracity and velocity.

Like you, I have enormous problems with deploying censorship to completely obliterate any type of thought from readable form. I see it as society's job to target the demand (the reader's desires and education), not the supply (the writer). If people want to start believing crackpots in large numbers, well, maybe society needs to look to its basic education systems...

That said, velocity is somewhat of a trickier matter.

As a thought exercise, what would the net effect be if Facebook implemented systems that resulted in misinformation being slowed? I.e. I share {link}, it takes x1.5 base time to propagate to my friends' feeds.

The information would still be available, and shared, but the viral velocity would also be reduced.

(Note: Of the available options, delay-only seems far preferable than anything else that could lead to a de facto shadowban)

(1) The current velocity of disinformation is high -> (2) this leads to socially harmful outcomes -> (3) providing P2P encryption in turnkey form via social network apps isn't a good idea.

I don't see the suggestions of panopticon you do. I see someone saying 'Most people on social media platforms aren't responsible, thoughtful enough media consumers to earn a right to encryption.'

Personally? I think it's a perspective worth considering. {Low-effort P2P encryption + low-effort forwarding} is a fundamentally different social value proposition than {Medium-effort P2P encryption + medium-effort forwarding}.

Which is a shame, but the corporate game theory optimality of leapfrogging between hot projects has held true at essentially every company I've ever worked for.

"Q: As someone who has built your life on science and logic, I’m curious what you think when you see so many people signing onto this anti-science view of the world.

A: Well, strangely, I’m involved in almost everything that anti-science is fighting. I’m involved with climate change, GMOs, and vaccines. The irony is that it’s digital social media that allows this kind of titillating, oversimplistic explanation of, “OK, there’s just an evil person, and that explains all of this.” And when you have [posts] encrypted, there is no way to know what it is. I personally believe government should not allow those types of lies or fraud or child pornography [to be hidden with encryption like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger].

Q: Well, you’re friends with Mark Zuckerberg. Have you talked to him about this?

After I said this publicly, he sent me mail. I like Mark, I think he’s got very good values, but he and I do disagree on the trade-offs involved there. The lies are so titillating you have to be able to see them and at least slow them down. Like that video where, what do they call her, the sperm woman? That got over 10 million views! [Note: It was more than 20 million.] Well how good are these guys at blocking things, where once something got the 10 million views and everybody was talking about it, they didn’t delete the link or the searchability? So it was meaningless. They claim, “Oh, now we don’t have it.” What effect did that have? Anybody can go watch that thing! So I am a little bit at odds with the way that these conspiracy theories spread, many of which are anti-vaccine things. We give literally tens of billions for vaccines to save lives, then people turn around saying, “No, we’re trying to make money and we’re trying to end lives.” That’s kind of a wild inversion of what our values are and what our track record is."

There's an incredibly broad set of permissions (at the cloud or OS level). Any app / tool may be written to use any subset of those. And what it uses is rarely documented (because developers don't see IAM security as a primary feature, outside of apps intended for use in regulated environments).

Without automation, this thus requires continual reverse engineering, which is never a healthy, sane long-term solution.

This should be fixed on the product / app side, where folks are much better placed to dump "I need this, and only this" in machine-readable form.

In more monopolistic areas (insurance, banking), my experience has been closer to government. In more cutthroat areas (tech, retail), it's been on the other end of spectrum.

What use is {x} when someone can {attempt to avoid x}?

Because we live in the real world, and no authority is omniscient and absolute.

Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by corporate incompetence.

1. News agencies 2. Business of publishing, producing, master issuing, and importing of books, newspaper and periodical 3. Business of publishing, producing, master issuing and importing of audio and visual products and electronic publications 4. Radio stations, TV stations, radio and TV transmission networks at various levels (transmission stations, relaying stations, radio and TV satellites, satellite up-linking stations, satellite receiving stations, microwave stations, monitoring stations, cable broadcasting and TV transmission networks) 5. Companies of publishing and playing of broadcast and TV programs 6. Companies of films making, issuing, business 7. News website, network audiovisual service, on line service location, internet art management 8. Construction and management of golf course 9. Gambling industry (including gambling turf) 10. Eroticism

Nice to know the Chinese Communist Golf Course lobby is alive and effective though! :)

Censorship requirements are the least restrictive Chinese law.

Look at industries where foreign companies are outright restricted (must form non controlling joint venture with local partner) or prohibited from operating in: http://english.mofcom.gov.cn/article/policyrelease/aaa/20120...

See: "Catalogue of Restricted Foreign Investment Industries" and "Catalogue of Prohibited Foreign Investment Industries"

It sticks in my memory because I remember being somewhat annoyed at the writing level hitherto, reading through that sentence, realizing what I'd just read a few sentences later, going back to double-check, then chucking the book.

And don't get me wrong, I've got space for some crappy writing in my sci-fi (looking at you, Foundation).

It's in the Food section [0], and tagged with "Critic's Notebook" anywhere the article is linked. That apparently being one of their blog / opinion lines for food.

It doesn't seem fair to look at modern news conglomerates (which typically combine news and opinion) and complain that the non-news content bismirches the journalism.

That content typically funds the journalism, and is the only reason the latter still exists.

A fair shot would be saying "I do not feel like this article is appropriately declared as opinion." Which, maybe. But I think that's debatable, and the NYT certainly differentiates a helluva lot better than Fox News and MSNBC.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/section/food

I believe the "Nope" sentence was something akin to "{character} thought that {thing} because {thing}."

Jesus Christ. Would it kill you a little to show instead of tell?

(And lest people believe I'm not a fan of some good * opera, I'm not ashamed to admit I've read my fair share of BattleTech, Barsoom, and even Lost Fleet, among less highbrow works)

75m MAU in 2008 is very different than 2.6b in 2020.

Rename it "Skype for Teens". Make no changes to the codebase.

Fly fishing feels more like bird-watching to me though: in that it's relatively easy and cheap to do, but not a thing you would ever do accidentally.

[1] https://outdoorindustry.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/2018-... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/376710/active-skiers-and... [3] https://www.dema.org/store/download.aspx?id=7811B097-8882-47... [4] https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170315005391/en/Cam... [5] https://www.statista.com/statistics/191240/participants-in-h...

It's been my experience that you get crappy software, produced with great effort and much gnashing of teeth, if your developers don't know your users.

You get folks who just do it as a hobby (because it's not that expensive), die hard folks who live it (but aren't that wealthy), plus ultra-wealthy folks (who are generally jealous of the former!). I think it's the peace and tranquillity that attracts.

Add to that, that at least in the US, Trout Unlimited is without a doubt the most politically-connected pure sportsperson lobbying organization.

E.g. It is well understood that users rely on a hotkey "a lot." It is not understood that users are so familiar with a hotkey that, if you relocated it on the keyboard, productivity would decrease 40% for 3 months.

That distinction is fairly important when trying to decide whether {new feature X} is actually worth disrupting {old feature Y}.