Because from all I can tell, Facebook (and others) are now choosing to block things that enough people outcry about or are in the news about. Racism, anti-vax, how do they choose?
What principle is being followed here? Or do you just have to get something in the news for long enough for it to be blocked? Is that an acceptable way of deciding?
How does this work for important but not-national-attentionworthy topics that are similarly violent / untruthful? In other countries?
As with so many matters that involve money, arguments fly around left and right that claim to be on principle, but really aren't.
When you see ESPN and Comcast argue over showing the World Series, don't buy the argument that one of them is "trying to prevent loyal customers from being able to see their favorite game", or when your local hospital group withdraws from your employer health plan that "the other side is trying to deprive you of consumer choice".
Each side is wanting to make a share of the money, and they're disagreeing over the price (or often the royalties share). No one is entitled to any particular provision of service in *any* of these cases. Except in regulated industries there's no law governing the "fair" share that someone has to offer, or someone has to accept. And in most cases, each side could choose to compromise what it's asking for with no damage to its model of business (not talking about $, just the principles they claim).
Spotify wants a lower $ charge. Apple owns the platform and controls that access and $ charge. That's it.
This is a private contract dispute and only of interest because you care about listening to music. There's no public right to have a music app be charged a certain amount that's called "fair". Spotify could charge nothing to consumers, and be charged nothing by Apple. It's their choice. It's Apple's choice.
Don't be fooled into "principles" when there's money involved.
Why "should" Apple do any of the things you want? Who determines "should"?
Last I thought about the issue, access to an app store and the terms of such access (which by the way didn't even exist almost 10 years ago) wasn't a public utility or good with an expectation of fairness of pricing or in modification of terms.
Under what right does one claim that Apple (or any ecosystem platform) has to do anything beyond what is regulated in the payment and terms of operation?
I think this decision is controversial because there is not enough evidence either way to say that grounding the fleet is right or wrong. China/Indonesia could be right, or the US could be right.
If the FAA believes that the AOA sensor issue was properly addressed with clarified training, then this incident adds no information at present to change that status. If the plane went down because of the same issue, they have resolved the issue in their judgement.
If though, something emerges from this investigation that provides new causal factors then we're in new territory. It is worrying though that without this new active training, this plane seems to confuse pilots. That alone should give carriers pause who do not emphasize or train enough on the new procedures.
Facebook angry at its developers who used the system they designed to its full extent? Surprised? Is this not like Dr. Jekyll yelling at Mr. Hyde for things that the split personality does at night?
"Why are you letting people take advantage of our users' personal information??" "You said we could do that!!" "No I didn't!" "Yes you did!" "I didn't mean it!"
This is ridiculous, and an attempt to shift blame from the rotten core.
Unfortunately, the SimCity designers forgot to code the module for old rich people (and their counterpart, misguided pseudo-liberals) who accuse you of gentrification any time you try to make enough room for new people to move into their cozy neighborhoods.
I don't know if anyone else saw the movie and would like to discuss it here. I watched it about 2 weeks ago in the theater.
I was pretty impressed with the first opening scene, and the final scene where the dad [plot spoiler, etc]. Those scenes had the music, pacing, narrative that seemed like it was to the quality and emotional sophistication of like Ridley Scott or someone similar.
However, much of the middle of the movie was low brow explosions, unbelievable story line, and cheap humor like it came out of the ass of Michael Bay or something. Such a schizophrenic movie production. Worth streaming though I think.
This article didn't butcher it too badly. But still there's a layer of education opportunity that was missed.
It wouldn't take more than 2 sentences to include an explanation about ground speed versus air speed. Not even talking about the differences in airspeed at different altitudes and densities, mach, etc. But I guess even that is too much for our technical details-allergic media.
Airline planners would likely have the routes deviate in the opposite direction to not be flying in the strongest part of the jetstream, so it's not an equal advantage / disadvantage for both directions.
You may be interested to see the jetstream maps for how wide it typically is: generally several hundred miles wide
Yeah, good luck Microsoft employees. Microsoft never claimed you were going there to change the world or "do good". Google invited its own problems by claiming to do such, and caused itself to hire people who would eventually debate politics at work, object to customers, and believe that business has morals above and beyond those imposed by regulations.
Microsoft employees know what they signed up for. A boring corporation that sells its product to whomever will pay. And mediocre applications that do their job just enough. It's not going to change out of its niche, and I have no expectation that it should.
All systems have bugs. The difference with Apple is that generally, the bugs get fixed and the hardware gets supported. As much as you hate their prices and controlled environment, can you say the same of other hardware manufacturers?
In general, both the legal system and legislative record suffer from a really stupid attachment to testimony being recorded in long form prose only.
Just think of all those congressional records and court transcripts / decisions with numbered lines and "whereas", "notwithstanding subsection 1)b)IV.." and "15% of the subtotal of appropriations designated..." or "a line defined by the coordinates 42d23'11"N, 73d45'04"W to the point 44d..."
So many words (and minds) would be clarified by the ability to show simple figures and charts that explain a topic so much better than words. It almost biases the system to be asking for legalese and prose rather than equations, diagrams, and diagrammatic precision (to the extent that someone takes the time to think through and present those ideas properly).
I have a real easy way for companies to care about privacy when they say they "care about privacy":
Penalties:
-- $2 for each name + password
-- $5 for credit card number
-- $10 for social security number
etc.
And multiply for combinations of the above. You'll see companies start fixing their processes (or simply refusing to store unnecessary data, right quick.
Well of course Facebook promotes this pseudo-science and discredited stuff. Facebook thrives when people argue and engage, and it suits FB to have quackery that people have to rally against or for, vocally. Put false or misleading things online, and watch the clicks roll in.
Not much business or money to be made in supporting the quiet truth of science or accepted facts where no one thinks they're finding out something new, is there? Maybe we need to change the incentives for these companies.
If the US government were capable of asserting intelligent policy, we would move to create a payments system where these middlemen aren't de facto taking over the payments infrastructure in the country. And, to be specific, scraping 3% margin on every transaction while they do it, enriching banks, costing merchants, while doling out some measly awards to customers who know how to take advantage.
For example, China is in real danger (maybe already happened) of a private company taking over their national payments infrastructure and going out of control.
There are legitimate exercises of public authority -- trust and control of the monetary and payments system is one such thing I would argue. Lots of countries have figured out how to roll out a very low cost, secure, instant bank transfers system -- shouldn't we consider it?
As much as the anti-gentrification politicians would claim a small victory, this is a loss for NYC and the future development / resilience of its economic base.
Cities will keep on losing this kind of battle until some form of government or policy arises to counter the power of corporations (which are de facto increasingly taking the role of governments). Under our current regulations and incentives, I'm actually glad to see Amazon flex its political capability and teach NYC a lesson in what happens when you let vocal minority dictate public policy. Let examples like this teach us how broken our laws are.
Note I am equally glad to see some day that government (federal, state) come up with policies that stop cities and states from undercutting each other to get a temporary revenue / population / popularity boost at the expense of giving away the farm just to get it (until you find out it wasn't worth it, and get to try and remember that at the next election). Or god forbid, actually create policies that in the long-term stimulate as many jobs as a corporation might in a single swoop.
Is there anything about India that "just works" or "makes sense"? Is it just me or does this country seem held together by duct tape and people doing everything by the seat of their pants? Everything about Indian national and local government seems inept, and culture (outside of corporations) seems so captured to the norms that you cannot change things because people have grown used to the chaos.
How do you distinguish collusion from algorithms simply figuring out the market price given buyer/seller volume, and realizing there's no benefit in deviating from that?
As much of a fan of high speed rail as I am, this project from the beginning was plagued by many issues:
- Distance of SF-LA being just beyond the edge of air/rail travel decision break point
- Lots of intractable property rights issues along the route (and lack of political willingness to exert eminent domain for a more reasonable route)
- High required labor and engineering cost (union requirements)
- Backwards approach to do the easiest part / least useful segment first
- Management team that kept moving the target (or was deceived) on cost, geotechnical feasibility, political backing
As a result, I concluded that despite how good it would be as a showcase project, this was not anywhere near the top of the list of cost-effective things you would invest in to improve CA transportation issues. And now they've had to embrace reality.
I would even say, the whole thing should be canned rather than continuing to dump money into a stupid central valley rail that no one will use. Bakersfield to Modesto? Tell me who's going to take that train...
The worst thing is that this will set a bad example / leave people burned and resistant to trying it again. Sometimes, we really do need authoritarian-style government to clear out resistance when a good project is identified but individual interests bog it down.
Wasn't the most recent news that there were suspicious circumstances about how much $ was in the coin purse, and whether the guy actually died or was had his death faked?
I think it's time that government in general consolidate and bulk up its capabilities to match the power of corporations (and by the way, also stop allowing people to derail it with ridiculous symbolic / meaningless debates on tiny unimportant issues).
Whether this takes some restructuring of government at the state + federal levels and maybe some amendments to lower our expectation of individual rights compared to overall societal good, whatever. Government is being outmatched by the power of corporations, and it will lose. We should fix it before it becomes unsolvable.
Sometimes I turn pessimistic and think that we need a good war (or maybe measles) to clear out the country of morons and people who are half stumbling through life on autopilot, making a mockery of the struggles we went through as a country to give people the prosperity we enjoy today.
Law enforcement want tools that share data and discover people doing all manner of things in public. People want tools that share data and discover law enforcement doing all manner of things in public.
Do you think one can be enabled, and the other is not?
Well, you're missing a technological aspect of the problem.
Apple does not / cannot decrypt data on your phone because once it's encrypted with the strong keys + your passcode, Apple has no ability to disable or circumvent the hardware to get it off the phone and let it be brute force cracked. And the hardware prevents brute force cracking while on the phone.
On the other hand, with servers and cloud data, Apple does have the ability to turn that over the encrypted data to someone to be decrypted, even if not by themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
So, how does this work?
Because from all I can tell, Facebook (and others) are now choosing to block things that enough people outcry about or are in the news about. Racism, anti-vax, how do they choose?
What principle is being followed here? Or do you just have to get something in the news for long enough for it to be blocked? Is that an acceptable way of deciding?
How does this work for important but not-national-attentionworthy topics that are similarly violent / untruthful? In other countries?
As with so many matters that involve money, arguments fly around left and right that claim to be on principle, but really aren't.
When you see ESPN and Comcast argue over showing the World Series, don't buy the argument that one of them is "trying to prevent loyal customers from being able to see their favorite game", or when your local hospital group withdraws from your employer health plan that "the other side is trying to deprive you of consumer choice".
Each side is wanting to make a share of the money, and they're disagreeing over the price (or often the royalties share). No one is entitled to any particular provision of service in *any* of these cases. Except in regulated industries there's no law governing the "fair" share that someone has to offer, or someone has to accept. And in most cases, each side could choose to compromise what it's asking for with no damage to its model of business (not talking about $, just the principles they claim).
Spotify wants a lower $ charge. Apple owns the platform and controls that access and $ charge. That's it.
This is a private contract dispute and only of interest because you care about listening to music. There's no public right to have a music app be charged a certain amount that's called "fair". Spotify could charge nothing to consumers, and be charged nothing by Apple. It's their choice. It's Apple's choice.
Don't be fooled into "principles" when there's money involved.
Why "should" Apple do any of the things you want? Who determines "should"?
Last I thought about the issue, access to an app store and the terms of such access (which by the way didn't even exist almost 10 years ago) wasn't a public utility or good with an expectation of fairness of pricing or in modification of terms.
Under what right does one claim that Apple (or any ecosystem platform) has to do anything beyond what is regulated in the payment and terms of operation?
I think this decision is controversial because there is not enough evidence either way to say that grounding the fleet is right or wrong. China/Indonesia could be right, or the US could be right.
If the FAA believes that the AOA sensor issue was properly addressed with clarified training, then this incident adds no information at present to change that status. If the plane went down because of the same issue, they have resolved the issue in their judgement.
If though, something emerges from this investigation that provides new causal factors then we're in new territory. It is worrying though that without this new active training, this plane seems to confuse pilots. That alone should give carriers pause who do not emphasize or train enough on the new procedures.
Facebook angry at its developers who used the system they designed to its full extent? Surprised? Is this not like Dr. Jekyll yelling at Mr. Hyde for things that the split personality does at night?
"Why are you letting people take advantage of our users' personal information??"
"You said we could do that!!"
"No I didn't!"
"Yes you did!"
"I didn't mean it!"
This is ridiculous, and an attempt to shift blame from the rotten core.
Unfortunately, the SimCity designers forgot to code the module for old rich people (and their counterpart, misguided pseudo-liberals) who accuse you of gentrification any time you try to make enough room for new people to move into their cozy neighborhoods.
For your information, there is nothing in the US Constitution that provides for a "right to privacy".
I don't know if anyone else saw the movie and would like to discuss it here. I watched it about 2 weeks ago in the theater.
I was pretty impressed with the first opening scene, and the final scene where the dad [plot spoiler, etc]. Those scenes had the music, pacing, narrative that seemed like it was to the quality and emotional sophistication of like Ridley Scott or someone similar.
However, much of the middle of the movie was low brow explosions, unbelievable story line, and cheap humor like it came out of the ass of Michael Bay or something. Such a schizophrenic movie production. Worth streaming though I think.
This article didn't butcher it too badly. But still there's a layer of education opportunity that was missed.
It wouldn't take more than 2 sentences to include an explanation about ground speed versus air speed. Not even talking about the differences in airspeed at different altitudes and densities, mach, etc. But I guess even that is too much for our technical details-allergic media.
Airline planners would likely have the routes deviate in the opposite direction to not be flying in the strongest part of the jetstream, so it's not an equal advantage / disadvantage for both directions.
You may be interested to see the jetstream maps for how wide it typically is: generally several hundred miles wide
Yeah, good luck Microsoft employees. Microsoft never claimed you were going there to change the world or "do good". Google invited its own problems by claiming to do such, and caused itself to hire people who would eventually debate politics at work, object to customers, and believe that business has morals above and beyond those imposed by regulations.
Microsoft employees know what they signed up for. A boring corporation that sells its product to whomever will pay. And mediocre applications that do their job just enough. It's not going to change out of its niche, and I have no expectation that it should.
All systems have bugs. The difference with Apple is that generally, the bugs get fixed and the hardware gets supported. As much as you hate their prices and controlled environment, can you say the same of other hardware manufacturers?
In general, both the legal system and legislative record suffer from a really stupid attachment to testimony being recorded in long form prose only.
Just think of all those congressional records and court transcripts / decisions with numbered lines and "whereas", "notwithstanding subsection 1)b)IV.." and "15% of the subtotal of appropriations designated..." or "a line defined by the coordinates 42d23'11"N, 73d45'04"W to the point 44d..."
So many words (and minds) would be clarified by the ability to show simple figures and charts that explain a topic so much better than words. It almost biases the system to be asking for legalese and prose rather than equations, diagrams, and diagrammatic precision (to the extent that someone takes the time to think through and present those ideas properly).
I have a real easy way for companies to care about privacy when they say they "care about privacy":
Penalties:
-- $2 for each name + password
-- $5 for credit card number
-- $10 for social security number
etc.
And multiply for combinations of the above. You'll see companies start fixing their processes (or simply refusing to store unnecessary data, right quick.
Well of course Facebook promotes this pseudo-science and discredited stuff. Facebook thrives when people argue and engage, and it suits FB to have quackery that people have to rally against or for, vocally. Put false or misleading things online, and watch the clicks roll in.
Not much business or money to be made in supporting the quiet truth of science or accepted facts where no one thinks they're finding out something new, is there? Maybe we need to change the incentives for these companies.
If the US government were capable of asserting intelligent policy, we would move to create a payments system where these middlemen aren't de facto taking over the payments infrastructure in the country. And, to be specific, scraping 3% margin on every transaction while they do it, enriching banks, costing merchants, while doling out some measly awards to customers who know how to take advantage.
For example, China is in real danger (maybe already happened) of a private company taking over their national payments infrastructure and going out of control.
There are legitimate exercises of public authority -- trust and control of the monetary and payments system is one such thing I would argue. Lots of countries have figured out how to roll out a very low cost, secure, instant bank transfers system -- shouldn't we consider it?
As much as the anti-gentrification politicians would claim a small victory, this is a loss for NYC and the future development / resilience of its economic base.
Cities will keep on losing this kind of battle until some form of government or policy arises to counter the power of corporations (which are de facto increasingly taking the role of governments). Under our current regulations and incentives, I'm actually glad to see Amazon flex its political capability and teach NYC a lesson in what happens when you let vocal minority dictate public policy. Let examples like this teach us how broken our laws are.
Note I am equally glad to see some day that government (federal, state) come up with policies that stop cities and states from undercutting each other to get a temporary revenue / population / popularity boost at the expense of giving away the farm just to get it (until you find out it wasn't worth it, and get to try and remember that at the next election). Or god forbid, actually create policies that in the long-term stimulate as many jobs as a corporation might in a single swoop.
Is there anything about India that "just works" or "makes sense"? Is it just me or does this country seem held together by duct tape and people doing everything by the seat of their pants? Everything about Indian national and local government seems inept, and culture (outside of corporations) seems so captured to the norms that you cannot change things because people have grown used to the chaos.
How do you distinguish collusion from algorithms simply figuring out the market price given buyer/seller volume, and realizing there's no benefit in deviating from that?
As much of a fan of high speed rail as I am, this project from the beginning was plagued by many issues:
- Distance of SF-LA being just beyond the edge of air/rail travel decision break point
- Lots of intractable property rights issues along the route (and lack of political willingness to exert eminent domain for a more reasonable route)
- High required labor and engineering cost (union requirements)
- Backwards approach to do the easiest part / least useful segment first
- Management team that kept moving the target (or was deceived) on cost, geotechnical feasibility, political backing
As a result, I concluded that despite how good it would be as a showcase project, this was not anywhere near the top of the list of cost-effective things you would invest in to improve CA transportation issues. And now they've had to embrace reality.
I would even say, the whole thing should be canned rather than continuing to dump money into a stupid central valley rail that no one will use. Bakersfield to Modesto? Tell me who's going to take that train...
The worst thing is that this will set a bad example / leave people burned and resistant to trying it again. Sometimes, we really do need authoritarian-style government to clear out resistance when a good project is identified but individual interests bog it down.
Wasn't the most recent news that there were suspicious circumstances about how much $ was in the coin purse, and whether the guy actually died or was had his death faked?
I think it's time that government in general consolidate and bulk up its capabilities to match the power of corporations (and by the way, also stop allowing people to derail it with ridiculous symbolic / meaningless debates on tiny unimportant issues).
Whether this takes some restructuring of government at the state + federal levels and maybe some amendments to lower our expectation of individual rights compared to overall societal good, whatever. Government is being outmatched by the power of corporations, and it will lose. We should fix it before it becomes unsolvable.
Sometimes I turn pessimistic and think that we need a good war (or maybe measles) to clear out the country of morons and people who are half stumbling through life on autopilot, making a mockery of the struggles we went through as a country to give people the prosperity we enjoy today.
Law enforcement want tools that share data and discover people doing all manner of things in public. People want tools that share data and discover law enforcement doing all manner of things in public.
Do you think one can be enabled, and the other is not?
Well, you're missing a technological aspect of the problem.
Apple does not / cannot decrypt data on your phone because once it's encrypted with the strong keys + your passcode, Apple has no ability to disable or circumvent the hardware to get it off the phone and let it be brute force cracked. And the hardware prevents brute force cracking while on the phone.
On the other hand, with servers and cloud data, Apple does have the ability to turn that over the encrypted data to someone to be decrypted, even if not by themselves.