As the Cambridge Analytica case shows, they do sell access to the data.
Facebook did not sell any data to Cambridge Analytica.
Facebook allowed university researchers limited access to user data. This was done at no cost, so there was no "selling". Those researchers then used the limited data with screen scrapers to get additional information on users, and then one or more of the researchers (not Facebook) passed the information on to Cambridge Analytica in blatant violation of their agreement with Facebook.
Facebook was certainly careless and incompetent, but they didn't "sell" data, nor did they intend for most of the user data to be seen by anyone outside Facebook.
You went on vacation, so you weren't home, which is a great time to break in and steal stuff.
The photos were posted after we returned. Anyway, if you want to find an unoccupied house, there is a far easier way: Knock on the door. If someone answers, apologize and say you had the wrong address. Otherwise, jimmy a window and load up your sack. Of course, you can't be sure that no one is home just because they didn't answer the door, but you can't be sure everyone in the house went on vacation either.
When we go on vacation, we lock up, recharge the security camera batteries, set all the motion sensor alarms, put bars in the windows, hide our valuables, and notify the neighbors. It would actually be the WORST time to rob us. A typical weekday while we are at work/school would be much better.
The location is somewhere in your history.
The location of my home was already public information long before social media existed. It is listed in the phone book (which is online), and is also listed on public documents at the Santa Clara County website, that anyone can access.
Also one can stop sharing everything about your life.
Or just don't post stuff you want to keep private. My wife posts photos of our vacation to Facebook. Do I care if the whole world knows where I went on vacation? Nope, not at all. My daughter posts pictures of all our meals. Do I care? Nope, unless Trump starts rounding up all the vegans (we are mostly liberals).
The things I want to keep private (my heroin dealer's cell number, assassination list, KGB paystubs) don't go on Facebook.
I have never regretted anything I posted. Using social media is fine as long as you aren't stupid about it.
People all around the world discussed the 1918 Flue Pandemic, but nobody knew how to cure it or even prevent it
The germ theory of disease was accepted long before 1918. By 1918 people knew very well that influenza was spread person-to-person, and that hygiene and quarantine were effective.
In 1918-19, 25% of the population in Western Samoa died of the Spanish flu, one of the highest rates in the world. In nearby American Samoa, the death rate was 0%. The reason for the difference? A prompt and effective naval quarantine.
If I use the internet to instigate a riot that burns down hundreds of homes because a cop shot a drug dealer that is not the internet's fault, it's my fault.
No it isn't. The clients specify the profile of the users they want to reach, and Facebook uses the data it has collected to place those ads. They do not sell the data to their advertising clients, they only sell access to specified segments of their users.
They would be foolish to sell the data itself, since they could only sell that once.
I just don't see the point of this. People can grow microgreens enough to feed their families in window sills...
People CAN do many things, but they don't want to. I grow most of my own fruit and vegetables, keep chickens in my backyard, have a beehive, and ferment my own yogurt. But I also realize that most people have no interest in doing any of those things.
I'd be more interested in yams or other calorie dense options like that.
That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Yams require a long growing season with lots and lots of direct sunlight. They grow long vines that require plenty of space. They can be transported easily and can be stored for months with no loss of taste or quality. Also they are cheap. I can't imagine a dumber crop to grow under lights in a city.
But it can't be worse than traditional farming that gets tons of subsidies
The subsidies go to staple crops like corn, sugar, and dairy. These are NOT what urban farms grow.
still farmers kill themselves by the dozen because they can't make it.
Farmers are doing well economically. The average farm family makes almost twice the median income, although not all that income comes from farming. Many farmers, or family members, have other jobs. Suicide is correlated with age, and many farmers are old. It is also correlated with gun ownership, and farmers are more likely to own guns.
Urban farms are unlikely to grow tomatoes either. Tomatoes need a lot of direct sunlight. They will not fruit well under LED light. They also benefit little from pest free environments, since tomato plants are already toxic to most insects. Unlike arugula and endive, the freshness of tomatoes is measured in days, not hours.
you are going to starve to death without corn, wheat or soybeans.
Urban farms are a supplement to traditional rural farms, not a replacement. They are inappropriate for calorie dense staples.
He might be able to hire help, at least for the initial development, on a site like Fiverr.
People that are bad at development tend to also be bad at hiring developers, so most likely he would end up wasting money on incompetents.
But the question is about getting people to work for free, not hiring help. Ideas are a dime a dozen, and it is extremely unlikely that he is going to get anyone to work on his, unless it is a really really good one... and "new computer languages" tend to be the dumbest ideas of all. That is the last thing the world needs.
And seriously, TEN YEARS to write a compiler? If he has a grammar (and if he doesn't, he has NOTHING) then just slap it into a parser generator such as Bison, and connect that to the gcc backend, or an existing parse tree interpreter, and you're done. That is a couple of weekends.
Most "urban farm" proposals that I have seen focus on growing "greens" such as arugula, endive, baby spinach, radicchio, broccoli sprouts, wheatgrass, etc. These are crops that sell at a very high premium for freshness. These crops grow very quickly, and are ready for harvest just a few weeks after planting. They also benefit biggly from growing in a pest-free environment, since insects can damage the appearance as well as triggering a bitter akaloid toxin response from the plant, and these crops sell at a premium if they are labeled as "pesticide free" and "locally grown".
Nobody is seriously considering growing feed corn or soybeans in cities.
Food deserts exist because of lack of demand, not lack of supply. Even when produce is available, most poor people don't buy it. My trailer park dwelling redneck relatives refer to salad as "hippie food".
... and before someone brings up the bogus argument that "good food is unaffordable", I will point out that plenty of healthy food is cheap: Oatmeal, carrots, turnips, squash. I buy soybeans in 50 lb sacks, and make my own soymilk, tofu, and tempeh. That is WAY cheaper than hamburger. At dinner, they drink soda, I drink tap water.
Solar converts about 20% of incident sunlight to electric power. Cropland is less than 1% efficient.
If solar panels on cheap desert land collect the energy, and it is used to power LEDs at very specific wavelengths optimized for photosynthesis, in pest-free and weed-free indoor facilities with perfect nutrients, and enriched CO2, all using plants genetically modified for these conditions,... it would likely still be uneconomical, but not obviously so.
Also they don't decrease transportation, they increase it. Fertilizer and supplies have to be trucked in, and waste transported out. But most importantly, any space dedicated to "urban farms" means less space for other things, such as housing. Which is going to reduce transport more: Avoiding a truck of produce once every 3 months, or avoiding dozens of people commuting to and from the suburbs every weekday?
Families living in urban apartments have only half the environmental footprint of families living in single family homes in the suburbs. Pushing more people out of the urban cores to make room for farms is not helpful.
In any case I would like a no-compromise complete-fairness-for-everyone solution, and can'd find any.
Instead of whining that it doesn't exist, why don't you create it yourself? Go start a company that pays above market wages, charges below market prices, and spends nothing on any advertising that may annoy someone. Then please come back here and tell us how it worked out. Good luck.
Fact of life: People will do what you pay them to do, not what you think you are paying them to do.
When I was a kid, my dad offered to pay me 2 cents for every dandylion I removed from the lawn. So I gathered plenty of dandylion seeds and scattered them on the lawn.
Perhaps. But TFA isn't about retail medicine. It is about funding R&D. For medical R&D, America does far more than any other country. Europeans are basically freeloaders leeching off American R&D spending.
Business only needs to charge at cost in order to maintain their existence.
No, an ROI of zero is not sustainable. If profits are consistently below prevailing interest rates, the business will be liquidated. Investors will be better off buying bonds instead.
Yes, but we effectively have zero consumer liability for fraud.
That means little in reality. Plenty of fraud is for small amounts that slip by without the consumer bothering to inquiry about an $8 charge on their card. For big charges involving identity theft, the burden is on YOU to prove the transactions were fraudulent, and even if you are successful, you may spend hundreds of hours, and have your credit ruined for years.
Pick your poison; not sure I want EU-styled consumer liability based on a PIN code alone.
So here are the choices: 1. Security based on a PIN that is under my full control, and can be changed if compromised. 2. The American way: Security based on my SSN and DOB, which are unchangeable, and have already been compromised a dozen times.
You would think one of the Asian social media sites would try to adapt their product for the US market.
They have. For instance, you can download WeChat in English. I use it almost everyday. It works fine. I use it to communicate with friends in China, but also to communicate with Chinese Americans, who almost all have the app on their phones. It has over a million users in America, although that is a small fraction of the billion total WeChat users.
Tesla should have a great deal less than 2 deaths under their belt to be on par with human safety levels.
That is a strong assertion from someone who says "I can't find any stats".
Human drivers kill about 15 people per billion miles.
Tesla Autopilot has driven more than 1.3 billion miles, and has killed two people. So the fatality rate is roughly a tenth that of humans. That is a lot better than "on par" with humans.
Reality is 'they all look alike', is inherently racist and prejudiced, full stop.
Bullcrap. Reality is that people have a hard time discriminating between faces when none of them are similar to what they are used to. That isn't "prejudice", it is just a fact.
I grew up in Tennessee, and first went to Asia as an 18 year old Marine. I had met very few Asians while growing up, and I had difficulty telling them apart despite trying hard to do so. When I left a year later, I could recognize Asian individuals easily, and I was on a first name basis with several dozen locals (in Henoko, Okinawa if anyone cares). This has nothing to do with being "prejudiced" or not thinking of them as individuals. My brain just needed time to adjust to a change in my environment.
Today, I have Asian neighbors, Asian coworkers,... and an Asian wife. I can immediately recognize differences between Asians just as easily as Caucasians. Because that is what I am familiar with.
Slashdot Mirror
As the Cambridge Analytica case shows, they do sell access to the data.
Facebook did not sell any data to Cambridge Analytica.
Facebook allowed university researchers limited access to user data. This was done at no cost, so there was no "selling". Those researchers then used the limited data with screen scrapers to get additional information on users, and then one or more of the researchers (not Facebook) passed the information on to Cambridge Analytica in blatant violation of their agreement with Facebook.
Facebook was certainly careless and incompetent, but they didn't "sell" data, nor did they intend for most of the user data to be seen by anyone outside Facebook.
You went on vacation, so you weren't home, which is a great time to break in and steal stuff.
The photos were posted after we returned. Anyway, if you want to find an unoccupied house, there is a far easier way: Knock on the door. If someone answers, apologize and say you had the wrong address. Otherwise, jimmy a window and load up your sack. Of course, you can't be sure that no one is home just because they didn't answer the door, but you can't be sure everyone in the house went on vacation either.
When we go on vacation, we lock up, recharge the security camera batteries, set all the motion sensor alarms, put bars in the windows, hide our valuables, and notify the neighbors. It would actually be the WORST time to rob us. A typical weekday while we are at work/school would be much better.
The location is somewhere in your history.
The location of my home was already public information long before social media existed. It is listed in the phone book (which is online), and is also listed on public documents at the Santa Clara County website, that anyone can access.
Also one can stop sharing everything about your life.
Or just don't post stuff you want to keep private. My wife posts photos of our vacation to Facebook. Do I care if the whole world knows where I went on vacation? Nope, not at all. My daughter posts pictures of all our meals. Do I care? Nope, unless Trump starts rounding up all the vegans (we are mostly liberals).
The things I want to keep private (my heroin dealer's cell number, assassination list, KGB paystubs) don't go on Facebook.
I have never regretted anything I posted. Using social media is fine as long as you aren't stupid about it.
People all around the world discussed the 1918 Flue Pandemic, but nobody knew how to cure it or even prevent it
The germ theory of disease was accepted long before 1918. By 1918 people knew very well that influenza was spread person-to-person, and that hygiene and quarantine were effective.
In 1918-19, 25% of the population in Western Samoa died of the Spanish flu, one of the highest rates in the world. In nearby American Samoa, the death rate was 0%. The reason for the difference? A prompt and effective naval quarantine.
If I use the internet to instigate a riot that burns down hundreds of homes because a cop shot a drug dealer that is not the internet's fault, it's my fault.
I would say the rioters are at fault.
A smartphone app lets them track your location, see your cell number, email address, grab your friends list, etc.
A desktop browser gives them none of that information.
The user data is being given to those clients
No it isn't. The clients specify the profile of the users they want to reach, and Facebook uses the data it has collected to place those ads. They do not sell the data to their advertising clients, they only sell access to specified segments of their users.
They would be foolish to sell the data itself, since they could only sell that once.
All this, of course, is not considering leaks.
I just don't see the point of this. People can grow microgreens enough to feed their families in window sills...
People CAN do many things, but they don't want to. I grow most of my own fruit and vegetables, keep chickens in my backyard, have a beehive, and ferment my own yogurt. But I also realize that most people have no interest in doing any of those things.
I'd be more interested in yams or other calorie dense options like that.
That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Yams require a long growing season with lots and lots of direct sunlight. They grow long vines that require plenty of space. They can be transported easily and can be stored for months with no loss of taste or quality. Also they are cheap. I can't imagine a dumber crop to grow under lights in a city.
And how much is that in "average income"?
Do you know how to use Google? No? The median income for full time farmers in 2018 is projected to be $119k. That is net income per household.
Median income has no meaning
Did you take math since 4th grade? Do you seriously not know what "median" means?
especially if you don't tell us what the median is.
Median income for American households is ~ $59k. That is about half what the median full time farming household makes.
But it can't be worse than traditional farming that gets tons of subsidies
The subsidies go to staple crops like corn, sugar, and dairy. These are NOT what urban farms grow.
still farmers kill themselves by the dozen because they can't make it.
Farmers are doing well economically. The average farm family makes almost twice the median income, although not all that income comes from farming. Many farmers, or family members, have other jobs. Suicide is correlated with age, and many farmers are old. It is also correlated with gun ownership, and farmers are more likely to own guns.
Unless you eat about 15kg of tomatoes per day
Urban farms are unlikely to grow tomatoes either. Tomatoes need a lot of direct sunlight. They will not fruit well under LED light. They also benefit little from pest free environments, since tomato plants are already toxic to most insects. Unlike arugula and endive, the freshness of tomatoes is measured in days, not hours.
you are going to starve to death without corn, wheat or soybeans.
Urban farms are a supplement to traditional rural farms, not a replacement. They are inappropriate for calorie dense staples.
He might be able to hire help, at least for the initial development, on a site like Fiverr.
People that are bad at development tend to also be bad at hiring developers, so most likely he would end up wasting money on incompetents.
But the question is about getting people to work for free, not hiring help. Ideas are a dime a dozen, and it is extremely unlikely that he is going to get anyone to work on his, unless it is a really really good one ... and "new computer languages" tend to be the dumbest ideas of all. That is the last thing the world needs.
And seriously, TEN YEARS to write a compiler? If he has a grammar (and if he doesn't, he has NOTHING) then just slap it into a parser generator such as Bison, and connect that to the gcc backend, or an existing parse tree interpreter, and you're done. That is a couple of weekends.
Most "urban farm" proposals that I have seen focus on growing "greens" such as arugula, endive, baby spinach, radicchio, broccoli sprouts, wheatgrass, etc. These are crops that sell at a very high premium for freshness. These crops grow very quickly, and are ready for harvest just a few weeks after planting. They also benefit biggly from growing in a pest-free environment, since insects can damage the appearance as well as triggering a bitter akaloid toxin response from the plant, and these crops sell at a premium if they are labeled as "pesticide free" and "locally grown".
Nobody is seriously considering growing feed corn or soybeans in cities.
Food deserts exist because of lack of demand, not lack of supply. Even when produce is available, most poor people don't buy it. My trailer park dwelling redneck relatives refer to salad as "hippie food".
... and before someone brings up the bogus argument that "good food is unaffordable", I will point out that plenty of healthy food is cheap: Oatmeal, carrots, turnips, squash. I buy soybeans in 50 lb sacks, and make my own soymilk, tofu, and tempeh. That is WAY cheaper than hamburger. At dinner, they drink soda, I drink tap water.
Solar won't do it ...
Solar converts about 20% of incident sunlight to electric power. Cropland is less than 1% efficient.
If solar panels on cheap desert land collect the energy, and it is used to power LEDs at very specific wavelengths optimized for photosynthesis, in pest-free and weed-free indoor facilities with perfect nutrients, and enriched CO2, all using plants genetically modified for these conditions, ... it would likely still be uneconomical, but not obviously so.
Also they don't decrease transportation, they increase it. Fertilizer and supplies have to be trucked in, and waste transported out. But most importantly, any space dedicated to "urban farms" means less space for other things, such as housing. Which is going to reduce transport more: Avoiding a truck of produce once every 3 months, or avoiding dozens of people commuting to and from the suburbs every weekday?
Families living in urban apartments have only half the environmental footprint of families living in single family homes in the suburbs. Pushing more people out of the urban cores to make room for farms is not helpful.
Freeloaders? So you think that we in Europe does not pay for the patents and drugs sold by US companies?
Have you seen drug prices in America? Europeans pay a small fraction of what Americans pay for the same drug.
In any case I would like a no-compromise complete-fairness-for-everyone solution, and can'd find any.
Instead of whining that it doesn't exist, why don't you create it yourself? Go start a company that pays above market wages, charges below market prices, and spends nothing on any advertising that may annoy someone. Then please come back here and tell us how it worked out. Good luck.
Fact of life: People will do what you pay them to do, not what you think you are paying them to do.
When I was a kid, my dad offered to pay me 2 cents for every dandylion I removed from the lawn. So I gathered plenty of dandylion seeds and scattered them on the lawn.
U.S. citizens die sooner than even U.K citizens.
Perhaps. But TFA isn't about retail medicine. It is about funding R&D. For medical R&D, America does far more than any other country. Europeans are basically freeloaders leeching off American R&D spending.
How do you define profit here?
Income minus expenses.
Business only needs to charge at cost in order to maintain their existence.
No, an ROI of zero is not sustainable. If profits are consistently below prevailing interest rates, the business will be liquidated. Investors will be better off buying bonds instead.
Yes, but we effectively have zero consumer liability for fraud.
That means little in reality. Plenty of fraud is for small amounts that slip by without the consumer bothering to inquiry about an $8 charge on their card. For big charges involving identity theft, the burden is on YOU to prove the transactions were fraudulent, and even if you are successful, you may spend hundreds of hours, and have your credit ruined for years.
Pick your poison; not sure I want EU-styled consumer liability based on a PIN code alone.
So here are the choices:
1. Security based on a PIN that is under my full control, and can be changed if compromised.
2. The American way: Security based on my SSN and DOB, which are unchangeable, and have already been compromised a dozen times.
Golly, that is a tough decision.
You would think one of the Asian social media sites would try to adapt their product for the US market.
They have. For instance, you can download WeChat in English. I use it almost everyday. It works fine. I use it to communicate with friends in China, but also to communicate with Chinese Americans, who almost all have the app on their phones. It has over a million users in America, although that is a small fraction of the billion total WeChat users.
Tesla should have a great deal less than 2 deaths under their belt to be on par with human safety levels.
That is a strong assertion from someone who says "I can't find any stats".
Human drivers kill about 15 people per billion miles.
Tesla Autopilot has driven more than 1.3 billion miles, and has killed two people. So the fatality rate is roughly a tenth that of humans. That is a lot better than "on par" with humans.
Reality is 'they all look alike', is inherently racist and prejudiced, full stop.
Bullcrap. Reality is that people have a hard time discriminating between faces when none of them are similar to what they are used to. That isn't "prejudice", it is just a fact.
I grew up in Tennessee, and first went to Asia as an 18 year old Marine. I had met very few Asians while growing up, and I had difficulty telling them apart despite trying hard to do so. When I left a year later, I could recognize Asian individuals easily, and I was on a first name basis with several dozen locals (in Henoko, Okinawa if anyone cares). This has nothing to do with being "prejudiced" or not thinking of them as individuals. My brain just needed time to adjust to a change in my environment.
Today, I have Asian neighbors, Asian coworkers, ... and an Asian wife. I can immediately recognize differences between Asians just as easily as Caucasians. Because that is what I am familiar with.