You might be right, although Facebook has only reached those dizzying heights in the last few years... as their growth slowed. In 2015 their gross was half what it is now. Software companies can rack up high margins once all there is to do is keep the servers ticking over and do a cosmetic release now and then.
Even 30x though... for a company with growth potential fine, but Instagram's revenue is pretty tightly coupled to the count of wealthy eyeballs, and they've already got a good chunk of the eyeballs in existence, probably quite skewed towards the wealthy ones.
The true brilliance of marketing. All that psychological manipulation isn't actually to convince consumers to buy stuff, it's to convince business that you can convince consumers to buy stuff.
You might be a bit optimistic on Instagram profit. I couldn't find any actual numbers but social media companies don't seem to have quite the profit margins you'd think they should. They love to talk about revenue though.
The bigger problem: P/E of 30 isn't so bad for a rapidly growing company with lots of potential. But what about a company who's users already comprise a large fraction of the population of the planet? How much can Instagram actually grow? And if it does manage to double it's profits, is 15-20 years for breakeven (of a social media company) reasonable?
Have you noticed how many of the most vocal proponents of minimum basic income are tech billionaires?
They're the ones who know where tech is going, are smart enough to realize the societal implications, and are aware that it's good to be rich, but not good to be TOO rich when a bunch of poor people are getting desperate.
That doesn't make it right. If a company covers up harassment, they should absolutely be liable. If a company acts responsibly and discloses any harassment complaints to the police, then they shouldn't be.
Corporations taking it upon themselves to investigate employees for things not related to the job, judge, convict, and punish them, is also wrong.
It wasn't enough that capitalism allows (virtually requires) people to surrender their freedom for 1/3+ of the day in exchange for food, the corporations want to extend their control outside normal working hours into employees' private lives as well. In some places they're allowed to do so.
If some overlord telling people they have to sit at a desk whether or not there's work to be done doesn't give you pause, the same overlord telling them who they may or may not see socially outside of working hours really should.
Objective-C did that pretty well. IIRC at one point you could compile an objective-C program into an app bundle that supported 32-bit PPC, 64-bit PPC, 32-bit Intel and 64-bit Intel. The programmer didn't have to care, and the user didn't either: the same app would run on any of the four platforms.
Blockchain trusts all users too. Anybody can make any change to the blockchain they feel like, but then nerds argue about which is the one true change. Eventually they vote based on the size of their computer.
Truly an Internet technology.
You're right though, Git is nothing like bitcoin (it IS a blockchain). Git has passwords.
The government is failing to clean up after me....
Even if every plastic utensil made it into a landfill somewhere, that's still not really a great solution. Most business won't even notice a disposable plastic ban. A few will, and they might have to come up with creative solutions. Heavens.
The best thing to help the poor people you're worried about would be to make fast food so expensive they couldn't possibly afford it, and do something about the grocery situation in big US cities. But if McDonalds really can't come up with anything other than charging an arm and a leg for metal cutlery, the poor will just bring their own. The rich, unfortunately, probably won't.
Chucking plastic into a campfire, sure. Proper incinerators can burn plastic safely (ultimately it's just a hydrocarbon) and make electricity at the same time.
It does release carbon, it's not an ideal solution, but in some cases it may be a reasonable one.
Yup. I have a few friends who work in marketing (they're nice people, really). They pretty much all give the standard justification "I help make people's lives better by introducing them to products they want or need."
The biggest problem with "everything is a file" is that it limits you to files. Files don't generally call you, for example, you have to poll.
The "everything is a file" and "simple programs that do one thing well" paradigms are great for system administration and lots of other things, but they're limiting if you take the philosophy too far.
In general, it's better for application programs, including scripts to use an application programming interface (API) such as/proc, rather than a user interface such as ifconfig, but in reality tons of scripts do use ifconfig and such.
Yes, the UNIX way has a fundamental flaw. It gets even worse when you realize that entire scientific disciplines have decided that shell scripting and files on disk is the best way to do stuff. There's nothing like an iterative algorithm that loads and saves it's (large) data to disk multiple times per iteration.
None of those things are economic problems, they're social problems. The US has a magnificent economy, certainly the most powerful that has ever existed, and it just keeps growing, year after year. So much so that tiny little hiccups, barely visible on the historical graph, are treated like catastrophes.
Now, socially, the US has some problems. With so much money they wouldn't be hard to solve. It's only the will to solve them that is wanting. Situation is similar for carbon emissions.
"there is insufficient political support for that"
That would be the no willpower to actually do anything problem.
In actual fact, there's lots of will, including political support to do it. Polls in the US show a majority of voters favour increased gun control. Problem is, there's a very vocal minority making everyone believe there's no will.
Slashdot Mirror
Mmm, there are easier ways.
You might be right, although Facebook has only reached those dizzying heights in the last few years... as their growth slowed. In 2015 their gross was half what it is now. Software companies can rack up high margins once all there is to do is keep the servers ticking over and do a cosmetic release now and then.
Even 30x though... for a company with growth potential fine, but Instagram's revenue is pretty tightly coupled to the count of wealthy eyeballs, and they've already got a good chunk of the eyeballs in existence, probably quite skewed towards the wealthy ones.
The true brilliance of marketing. All that psychological manipulation isn't actually to convince consumers to buy stuff, it's to convince business that you can convince consumers to buy stuff.
You might be a bit optimistic on Instagram profit. I couldn't find any actual numbers but social media companies don't seem to have quite the profit margins you'd think they should. They love to talk about revenue though.
The bigger problem: P/E of 30 isn't so bad for a rapidly growing company with lots of potential. But what about a company who's users already comprise a large fraction of the population of the planet? How much can Instagram actually grow? And if it does manage to double it's profits, is 15-20 years for breakeven (of a social media company) reasonable?
A billion food bloggers and selfie-takers just felt a disturbance in the force....
Have you noticed how many of the most vocal proponents of minimum basic income are tech billionaires?
They're the ones who know where tech is going, are smart enough to realize the societal implications, and are aware that it's good to be rich, but not good to be TOO rich when a bunch of poor people are getting desperate.
That doesn't make it right. If a company covers up harassment, they should absolutely be liable. If a company acts responsibly and discloses any harassment complaints to the police, then they shouldn't be.
Corporations taking it upon themselves to investigate employees for things not related to the job, judge, convict, and punish them, is also wrong.
It wasn't enough that capitalism allows (virtually requires) people to surrender their freedom for 1/3+ of the day in exchange for food, the corporations want to extend their control outside normal working hours into employees' private lives as well. In some places they're allowed to do so.
If some overlord telling people they have to sit at a desk whether or not there's work to be done doesn't give you pause, the same overlord telling them who they may or may not see socially outside of working hours really should.
Objective-C did that pretty well. IIRC at one point you could compile an objective-C program into an app bundle that supported 32-bit PPC, 64-bit PPC, 32-bit Intel and 64-bit Intel. The programmer didn't have to care, and the user didn't either: the same app would run on any of the four platforms.
Blockchain trusts all users too. Anybody can make any change to the blockchain they feel like, but then nerds argue about which is the one true change. Eventually they vote based on the size of their computer.
Truly an Internet technology.
You're right though, Git is nothing like bitcoin (it IS a blockchain). Git has passwords.
I'm pretty sure you can spin bamboo fibre into something you'd be hard pressed to tell from plastic on casual inspection.
The government is failing to clean up after me....
Even if every plastic utensil made it into a landfill somewhere, that's still not really a great solution. Most business won't even notice a disposable plastic ban. A few will, and they might have to come up with creative solutions. Heavens.
The best thing to help the poor people you're worried about would be to make fast food so expensive they couldn't possibly afford it, and do something about the grocery situation in big US cities. But if McDonalds really can't come up with anything other than charging an arm and a leg for metal cutlery, the poor will just bring their own. The rich, unfortunately, probably won't.
Chucking plastic into a campfire, sure. Proper incinerators can burn plastic safely (ultimately it's just a hydrocarbon) and make electricity at the same time.
It does release carbon, it's not an ideal solution, but in some cases it may be a reasonable one.
Yup. I have a few friends who work in marketing (they're nice people, really). They pretty much all give the standard justification "I help make people's lives better by introducing them to products they want or need."
The biggest problem with "everything is a file" is that it limits you to files. Files don't generally call you, for example, you have to poll.
The "everything is a file" and "simple programs that do one thing well" paradigms are great for system administration and lots of other things, but they're limiting if you take the philosophy too far.
Yes, the UNIX way has a fundamental flaw. It gets even worse when you realize that entire scientific disciplines have decided that shell scripting and files on disk is the best way to do stuff. There's nothing like an iterative algorithm that loads and saves it's (large) data to disk multiple times per iteration.
Kobe beef?
I wonder if the Kobe ranchers ever think to themselves "I'm massaging a a cow so some rich dude can pay $1000 for a steak"?
None of those things are economic problems, they're social problems. The US has a magnificent economy, certainly the most powerful that has ever existed, and it just keeps growing, year after year. So much so that tiny little hiccups, barely visible on the historical graph, are treated like catastrophes.
Now, socially, the US has some problems. With so much money they wouldn't be hard to solve. It's only the will to solve them that is wanting. Situation is similar for carbon emissions.
What about the immigrants who don't arrive by boat?
The US supreme court ruled in 2012 that you can't patent a naturally occurring gene sequence. You can patent a purely synthetic one.
So I guess you got half your wish? Or maybe more... I'm not sure there are any synthetic gene sequences used in GMOs.
Should work okay for gun control then. The majority of Americans are not gun owners.
I don't know why people bother with that one when there are a bunch of common sense exceptions to US freedom of speech:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Including the ultimate "I know it when I see it" one regarding obscenity.
"there is insufficient political support for that"
That would be the no willpower to actually do anything problem.
In actual fact, there's lots of will, including political support to do it. Polls in the US show a majority of voters favour increased gun control. Problem is, there's a very vocal minority making everyone believe there's no will.
Nah. Too much iron. More than a little bit will kill you.
Now, if you removed most of the iron, you might well be right. Provided the blood is from young people. The younger the better.
Ew. The elite don't want to eat commoner. They make the commoners milk roaches and then drink the milk.