heartbeats

Doing creepy psychological profiling to sell me ads for a few extra shekels? Very dodgy.

Doing creepy psychological profiling to find matches with traits neither party would otherwise voluntarily disclose on a public profile? I mean, yeah, sure.

It's not the case that people are concerned over Facebook having their innermost desires stored on some server somewhere, although they like to pretend so. The issue is more along the lines of whether natural persons they interact with IRL see them - this is why people are OK with using Tinder and Facebook messenger, but not with having private conversations over Twitter.

Of course, they'll use the profiling for both. But the end user arguably extracts more of the value than they do from getting sold more relevant ads.

— Yeah, sure.

— How did you spend it all?

— It goes quite quickly. You know, you learn to spend what's in your pocket.

— Two and a half million goes quickly?

— All right, let's see. So the taxman takes half up front, so you're left with one and a quarter. My mortgage takes another 300 grand. I send 150 home for my parents, you know, keep 'em going. So what's that?

— 800?

— All right, 800. Spent 150 on a car. About 75 on restaurants. Probably 50 on clothes. I put 400 away for a rainy day.

— That's smart.

— Yeah, as it turns out, 'cause it looks like the storm's coming.

— You still got 125.

— Yeah, well I did spend 76,520 dollars on hookers, booze and dancers. But mainly hookers.

— 76,5?

— I was a little shocked initially, but then I realized I could claim most of it back as entertainment. It's true!

(Margin Call, 2011)

The best you can hope for is to make the issues readily exportable in a standard CSV format. Does it already do this?

This stuff is easy, just look over the code- I mean blueprints before commi- I mean building and you'll be fine. Everyone knows you're supposed to put the weep holes in, so make sure to do that.

And let me guess, the sub-committee should have its own sub-committee, to hold meetings to prepare for the meetings to prepare for the meetings?

It reminds me of the company (which one? Philips?) which got so fed up with these people that it put all of them in a new department. Then, they got to hold their meetings and the rest got to do their work and everyone got along.

Web developers are not an ethnic group, so I would hesitate to call this xenophobic.

> In 2018, the securities regulator followed up by issuing a new corporate governance code requiring listed firms, at home and abroad, to include in their internal guidelines an expansive role for the party. Many Chinese companies listed in Hong Kong also wrote the party’s role into their articles of association.

> In some ways, codifying in public documents the party’s role in managing companies was both an instance of rare transparency and part of an increasing trend of the party openly displaying its power. In the past, Chinese state-owned listed companies had customarily filed misleading prospectuses ahead of their stock exchange listings, omitting the party’s pivotal role in the hiring and firing of senior executives. [...]

China doesn't have laws in the same way that we do. There, the model is that it's impossible to do business without violating the law, but the government might loosen up on enforcing it. If they feel like it, of course.

Against this backdrop, providing explicit legislation is just an unnecessary encumberance.

    He works for Tencent.
    He works for China.

    His company was purchased by Tencent.
    His company was purchased by China.

    Tencent operate the messaging app QQ.
    China operates the messaging app QQ.

There's no difference. As the country lacks rule of law, companies are direct subsidiaries of the government. As such, the only useful mental model is to treat it as an aggregate. Not "a Chinese citizen/company/organization did X," but "China did X".

If I get non-voting shares that do not pay dividends, then these aren't shares, they're just useless scraps of paper. If the only utility I can get from them is being able to point out that I "technically" own the entire world, it is indeed useless.

Maybe I'm willing to pay a dollar for it but certainly not two.

December 32nd would be much more sensible.

This is just tiresome. Wasn't piracy supposed to doom us all?

It's regrettable to see Google gaining more power, but the copyright cartel doesn't have a solid moral standing from which to complain.

EDIT: Yes, this is satire.

The user can of course opt out of it, but most people just follow the defaults. Inertia and all.

Children aren't productive members of society, therefore we store them in schools until they've grown up. Same principle - I'm not dehumanizing kids, for the record.

The reason there are more prisoners in America is because there's a larger underclass who are forced out of employment for structural reasons. As long as these issues persist (and indeed, they will get far worse), we have to keep the unemployment rate down somehow. Prisons are just the end effect of this requirement.

The important thing to remember is that the alleged crime doesn't actually matter. This is also why corrupt Wall Street bankers rarely get harsh prison sentences. Why would they, when they're going to be able to find a job without much trouble anyway?

It's the perfect way to kill one, actually.

1) Give them $0.2 billion a year in easy money

2) Their projects expand as per Parkinson's law so they spend $0.2 billion a year

3) Since they have easy money, they won't bother seeking alternative funding sources

4) They now find themselves in the same position as a crack whore vis-a-vis her pimp

Mozilla wouldn't ever abandon their fun pet projects, but with sufficient coercion they might abandon privacy for "fighting hate" or similar.

1) abandon tracking, earn ad revenue from Firefox and Chrome

2) keep tracking, earn no ad revenue from Firefox

Yandex ads will be more pleasant due to not having the large amounts of tracking, meaning they'll reduce page views less. As a result of blocking ads, Firefox will become much more pleasant to use. As a result, the first option will be more profitable.

Yandex' "other concerns" is the whole point - they are the only serious competitor to Google. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. If you were to enter into such a deal with another American/European company, the regulator would crush them over antitrust concerns. This leaves Yandex (or the Chinese) as your only options.

"In fine, let us recognize that the adoption of my advice will leave us each citizens of a free state, and as such arbiters of our own destiny, able to return good or bad offices with equal effect; while its rejection will make us dependent on others, and thus not only impotent to repel an insult, but on the most favourable supposition, friends to our direst enemies, and at feud with our natural friends." –Hermocrates

1) block all ads, by default

2) do not unblock Google's ads,

3) receive Adblock Plus-style bribes from Yandex or whoever to whitelist them, provided they don't harm privacy

This would kill several birds in one stone. First, break Mozilla free of Google funding. Second, hurt Google. Third, increase Firefox' market share. Fourth, help users' privacy.

As things stand today, Mozilla just exist so that Google can pretend they don't have a monopoly. Follow the money - who pays?

(A: Google pays nearly all of their budget, and they have next to no rainy day fund)

It doesn't functionally matter what happens in there, since it's the same thing as with standardized tests: all tests are inherently fair, regardless of how poorly constructed they are.

They won't, since the purpose is just to have somewhere to store people. The actual crime isn't very interesting, the thing of importance is that they have somewhere to store them.

Why do we have education?

Firstly, because there's needed some way to filter people. If you get 100 applicants, you can't make a detailed consideration. But if only 30 have degrees, it's much easier. So there is a signalling effect.

But secondly, and more importantly, because you need somewhere to have these kids. If there's ten million jobs and ten million two hundred thousand jobs, you'll get problems. This is also why many countries had military service, to further improve on the unemployment figures.

"We didn't raise [the school leaving age] to enable them to learn more! We raised it to keep teenagers off the job market and hold down the unemployment figures."

Prison is just a logical extension of this. If they weren't in prison, they would be unemployed and causing all sorts of trouble.