evancoop

I would be curious where the economic costs truly lie. Is Disney rent-seeking? Well, that would depend how many non-Disney entities are deploying Mickey Mouse and paying royalties for so doing (probably not common). Is there Mickey Mouse content sold by Disney that would command lesser prices if a competitor could ALSO generate Mickey Mouse content? Probably (in which case consumers pay higher prices, and competitors lose the opportunity to partake of that money trough).

However, the steel-manned argument for Disney is something like "look, you could always make some other character (e.g. Rowdy Rat), sell tons of them, and compete with us...what's so damned special about OURS apart from the creatives who build a world around him? If this were REALLY harming consumers, wouldn't there be all sorts of derivative works inviting lawsuits to determine what is and is not too close to the original?" The real question is whether Disney is so large and their litigiousness so frightening as to chill even that type of battle?

Consider the following: The majority of professionals in ANY field are mediocre at best, given the distribution of talent. Most developers aren't 10x folks. Most professional athletes aren't superstars. Most recruiters aren't insightful, matchmaking geniuses. In most cases, the market seems to work.

In the case of developers, truly elite talent is not compensated anywhere near 10x (or 100x) the standard-issue rate (unless they become founders). Thus, there is a massive incentive to cast a wide net, and hope to land a big fish for whom circumstances have misaligned.

For prospective employees, the best jobs are typically those one obtains through a network rather than a recruiter anyway - leading to a reluctance to engage, thus requiring a wider net.

Bottom-line, a few elite recruiters can and do behave differently. A few elite developers can and do earn more, and for the rest of us mere mortals, this paradigm is probably the equilibrium. Curious if automating responses to automated emails would lead to ever larger/wider outreach?

The broader argument here is less about fingerprints, and more about using anything immutable as authentication. You cannot change your fingerprints. You cannot change your social security number (at least not easily). These should therefore, NEVER be a primary method to authorize access to anything. Once stolen, the proverbial horse is out of the barn.

Let us posit that the patient's goal is to remain alive and well (maximize quality-adjusted life years). Let us posit that the doctor's goal is maximal renumeration. Cannot we simply compensate the doctor quarterly as a function of quality-of-life during that quarter along with some fixed retainer. Now the doctor hopes we remain alive and well as long as possible?

Perhaps there is some definition of freedom in mathematical terms in which the total scope of decision-making autonomy is maximized over all citizens? The barbarian example would yield a low tally, as the leaders of a hoard are "free," but their subordinates have little decision-making capacity. In terms of the limitations of personal freedoms, the boundary might lie where the diminishment of others' freedoms exceeds the diminishment of one's own if restrained. (E.g. killing someone eliminates all of their future decisions, but preventing a murder eliminates only one decision for the potential murderer?)

Can we truly scour the internet for small-time violators? Sure, if a massive entity like NYT or WSJ fail to comply, that could be called-out and addressed. But are we prepared to enforce such a paradigm at scale?

Are the companies that offer honest service disadvantaged in the long-run? Sure, in the short-term, a captive audience is profitable, but eventually, this should harm LTV?

There's something odd about legislation of this ilk. Virtually every comment here bemoans these nefarious activities, and the commenters themselves try to avoid companies that utilize these dark patterns. The market, therefore, seems to be working - the companies that pull this type of nefarious BS find their way into the dumpster of failed ventures (as they should!). Would a law, in effect, force companies to mask their unsavory dispositions? Customer LTV is actually higher when they are given the opportunity to control their subscriptions...

An overlooked notion, analogous to fat-tail, high-upside ROI is the absence of a similar downside risk. In the case of the sclerotic, flagging, midsize company failing to adapt, we're actually talking about a fixed downside (the company can fail) and a virtually unlimited upside. In this case, allowing talented humans to explore seems mathematically-required. And yet...

I might argue that computer science theory is not fundamentally harder, so much as the available tooling is far more sophisticated. Not so many years ago, the function for mean and median needed to be written rather than accessed within native libraries.

Now, complex neural network architectures are available to all. Alas, simply gaining that access does not in any imply deeper understanding of what is occurring under the hood. Perhaps the higher technical demands is simply a byproduct of the more complex "off-the-shelf" solutions and the need to do more than simply pip install, point, and click?

The contrarian in this case would be making Elizabeth Holmes' argument "first they say you're crazy...the you change the world." Of course, the folks delivering such an argument are either peddling vaporware or actually on a path to changing the world. Sometimes, perhaps even the speaker does not know the side of the divide on which they fall?

The best counterargument here is that currently, the market adjudicates this already. Roles demanding after-hours access typically yield higher compensation than similar roles that do not. The market essentially offers an employee the opportunity to offer an employer greater availability in exchange for pay. If the employer demands that access without the corresponding compensation, the employee is likely to depart. This law posits a market failure. Does one exist?

That would suggest an oscillation - network effects to inflate network sizes, abuse, mismanagement, frustration, disruption, creation of a new paradigm. Lather, refactor, repeat?

Personal agency requires a sober assessment of priorities. Everything has an opportunity cost. Certainly, a full-time job and a non-trivial side project takes from self-care and family. Certainly, self-care and family (and sleep!) can preclude side-hustles.

The important element is making the choice with clear eyes.

One question of great relevance is the change in the statistic implied by the article's title over the past couple decades, and the projected change in the decades to come. Is this Moore's-law-esque? If so, eventually, these concerns will be trivial. Is an asymptote approaching? If so, this metric becomes increasing relevant and crucial.

While ads are frustrating, isn't the pervasive nature of surveillance capitalism worse? Would we rather pay some small amounts for the digital products we use, watch a handful of ads, or handover the totality of our thoughts, intentions, and behavior to the provider?

Seems like our grandparents were correct. Nothing is free.

TL/DR. Taxpayers fund research that they cannot access without additional payment.

Same thing almost occurred with weather data (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-14/trump-s-p...)

Simply a system with broken incentives (publish in these longstanding journals or perish), a system designed to exploit those incentives (pay us to publish in the aforementioned journals), and a group of humans who have little personal incentive to stick their necks out (e.g. grad students and professors).

How many fascinating analogs exist for this problem? "...the corrosion on the glass also forms millions of tiny pits. The authors think those pits could serve as tiny reaction chambers..."

In other words, the experimental conditions, as intended, were almost "too perfect." The simulation of reality requires some amount of unspecified noise with respect to CONDITIONS, in this case, corroded glass.

How many experiments, on the terminal or the bench, are run with noise in the underlying test conditions?

A poem in honor of Halloween! After a stint running advanced analytics for a mid-size professional services firm, a few observations emerge regarding an institution's readiness to use data (or lack thereof!).

What makes Moneyball a fascinating example is neither Brad Pitt's star-power nor Michael Lewis's writing. Baseball is an optimal canvas for finding market inefficiencies because everything is tallied and tracked. We can ascertain after the fact who ultimately did add value to their organizations.

In this case, the author argues what Billy Beane argued, "if we think like the Yankees in here, we will lose to them out there." If non-FAANG companies compete for the same prospective employees as FAANG employees, they will lose to vastly superior compensation packages. Fair enough.

So the question, which traits are analogous to on-base-percentage? Take the FAANG-hire-resume, then subtract features (e.g. lose the top-10 university credential, remove a couple years of experience, ditch the years with a trendy package, etc). Which decreases the hiring cost the most with the smallest loss of long-term value to the hiring company? What data set would track/measure this and what could be deployed as a proxy?