Isn't this conversation, not publishing scientific hypotheses, theories and findings?
If so, it is customarily permissible to use rhetoric and sarcasm to more strongly emphasize a point. Or, to leave the conclusion as an exercise for the reader.
By intentionally hiding their position (and simultaneously acting as though it is completely obvious) the OP shuts down any useful conversation that might follow. Do they think Meta will sell the user's data? Do they think different people are in charge of different policies at Meta leading to actions that appear to be in conflict with each other? Do they think they will use this information to train AI models? Do they think they will use this information to serve Ads?
There are many interesting ways that the conversation could have been carried forward but there is no way to continue the conservation as the OP doesn't make it clear what they think.
The only thing I can say is: No I cannot figure it out, please tell me what you're trying to say here.
What’s the point in providing a rebuttal to these points (e.g. that Meta doesn’t actually sell data to anyone) if the OP can simply say “that’s not what I meant”?
They are taking a position that cannot be argued against or even discussed because they don’t make that position clear.
> providing a rebuttal to these points (e.g. that Meta doesn’t actually sell data to anyone)
So one of your suggestions of what the OP could mean was something you explicitly don’t think is true and would argue against? That sounds like a bad faith straw man set up.
Perhaps it’s just as well that the OP didn’t provide one specific reason to be nitpicked ad nauseam by an army of “well ackshually” missing the forest for the trees.
You could, as the HN guidelines suggest, argue in good faith and steel man. The distinction between “selling your data” and “profiting from your data” isn’t important for a high level discussion.
Can you truly not see through Meta’s intentions? There are entire published books, investigations, and whistleblowers to reference. Zuckerberg called people “dumb fucks” for trusting him with their data and has time and again proven to be a hypocrite who doesn’t care about anyone but himself.
Or, OP is not hiding their position and shutting down conversation — they are not imposing their position and are opening it up to discussion.
What prevents you from saying "Yes, and Xyz!!" and another poster "Yup, and Pdq, and Foo too!"
Or, maybe OP is just being a bit lazy, but again, it seems the context is conversation, not formal scientific inquiry where everything must be falsifiable?
I think they meant that Meta is offloading the cost (fines) of farming minor's data onto the operating systems. With an up-front cost of 2 billion dollars in lobbying, they can avoid paying 300m+ fees regularly.
If you consider how the reading, audio, and video you consume either builds or degrades your capabilities and character, as the food or poison you consume either builds or degrades your physical health, then [looking at US top videos on YouTube any given day] literally IS taking poison for your mind.
Depending on the poison and the dosage, eating the poison for your body instead may be the lesser of the two evils.
Weird. No activity or response to an obscure post beyond a couple upvotes. Then, the next day a brigade no-engagement downvotes. IDC, but seems like some corporate image management trying to hide negative takes on Google properties? Sheesh
This is the critical data —» how many people hang up on the AI chatbot vs how many people hang up on the voice message prompt.
If it is even close, well, the AI needs to be improved.
If the AI is way ahead, but still loses/drops more than a live receptionist (outsourced or in-house), the AI either needs improvement, or to be dumped for a live receptionist, and that's kind of a spreadsheet problem (how many jobs lost in each case, vs costs).
I think the question of lost opportunities versus costs is the best thing to look at here. You could pay a receptionist like 50-60k a year but they have to bring in the work. Maybe the AI dumps a percentage over a real receptionist but they still bring in more than the mailbox. But there's a cost to the AI too.
But the real question you should also ask is what else can that human do for you that the AI can't because they have eyes and ears and hands?
The question is more why employ a full time receptionist when fractional services are available and it’s an old well established industry. A couple hundred dollar a month could employ a human only when the phone rings and to schedule their visit plus any FAQ. I’m sure Ruby.com already has plenty of auto shop customers.
Seems we need a new digital category for Darwin Awards.
This is the modern way to die of stupidity — use your fitness watch app to log your miles on an online app instead of locally — so reveal your operational location.
The US had one of its secret bases in Afghanistan fully mapped for anyone to see by its residents logging their on-base runs.
Now, the French aircraft carrier is pinpointed en route to a war zone.
Yes OPSEC is hard, and they should be trained to not do this, but it seems to be getting ridiculous. If I were in command of such units, I'd certainly be calling for packet inspection and a large blacklist restriction of apps like that (and the research to back it up).
Local first is not just a cute quirk of geeks, it is a serious requirement.
No amount of OPSEC lectures or packet inspection is going to sufficiently keep the carrier's private information private. There's thousands of sailors on these things. When details like its location and readiness level actually need to be secret, all regular internet access should just be cut off. Radio silence. I assume this person had internet access to use Strava because the carrier isn't yet in some higher level of readiness and its location isn't yet considered much of a secret.
Yep. A full moat is the only sure way, and indeed, the OPSEC lectures and even pre-announced severe punishments will never be 100% — there is always some idiot who thinks he is special and rationalizes it in his head. Allowing traffic to only a small pre-vetted whitelist of sites works only until someone fires up a VPN, which again, no amount of lectures & punishments will prevent.
Assuming this is as reliable effect as implied in the article, a cost-effective method to jump start solar install rates would be to map out roughly 1km wide zones and provide a high and declining subsidies for the first/early people to get solar installed. E.g., go to map and find your house and zone, if five haven't signed up in your zone, it's open, the first to put deposit on install contract gets a $15k subsidy when install complete, $12k for second, $9k for 3rd, $6k 4th, $3k 5th. Adjust zone sizes and/or subsidy amounts for subsidy budget, population density, etc.
Probably a lot cheaper than a $3k subsidy for everyone, as this is only 15 $3k subsidies in each zone. Also probably a lot better to do this with everyone gets a $2.5k subsidy and the first five get the higher incentives.
Seriously, have you ever used one? Because most people do not read monotonically downwards. We often scroll back to see something in a previous sentence referred to in the spot we are reading. So we want to go back one or two lines. Bot NOOOOooo, the header pops up, covers 1/4 of the screen, so now we have to scroll that much more, pushing off the screen the other text we hoped to keep on the screen, and it might even go through a few adjustments. So, now, what was a non-event less distracting than turning the page in a book or magazine has now become a fully distracting scroll-fest.
Is that clear enough for you?
>>This is literally the best ux pattern you can have.
NOT EVEN CLOSE. The best User Experience pattern is to give the reader what they asked for AND NOTHING MORE. Nothing more for you, nothing more for your advertisers, and nothing more for them. We click to read the content, LET US READ the content, ALL the content, and NOTHING BUT the content. We'll even understand if some proper STATIC adverts are placed in the content, and we might even click thru if you've shown us something relevant and interesting
But as soon as you start putting motion and other distraction in the adverts, my priority becomes NOT reading the advert, but figuring out how to get it out of my face. And if by some chance I remember it, it is filed among "companies to avoid".
Why does it seem everyone who deals with advertising, from the execs down to the programmers, so stupidly thinks only of the first-order effects — "Grab Their Attention!" — and not the second-order effects, where being so offensive — surprise! — offends people...
Even on mobile, where I most frequently encounter it, it really stinks. I don't know where you found any personality who actually likes it, outside of your own head.
If you really must show me the content of the header because in your judgement I can _NOT_ be left alone to read the article I opened instead of your critical header info, show me first and once, and let me access it again off the hamburger menu if it's that damn important.
If you know so much about how people actually use the web, you would also know that they almost NEVER actually see or read what is in those damn drop-down or pop-up headers/footers.
Dead serious, you could monitor me, and 10sec after I dealt with one of those headers, offer me a million dollars to tell you what was in it, and if I didn't you'd shoot me, you'd shoot me 999 times out of 1000. I may be a bit better self-trained for ad-blindness than many, but I know I'm nowhere near unique.
Whoever is selling them to the advertisers is defrauding them.
>>next time i build a site, i'll be sure to get your opinions first.
Seriously, with that attitude, it is obvious you think you are so much better than every reader that you do not need to check their opinion. And it is even more obvious the opinion that needs to be held in check is yours.
> I don't know where you found any personality who actually likes it, outside of your own head.
That's probably because I don't like it myself. You thinking I did like it is something in your head.
As a developer, I can understand why it was created. Sometimes, ideas sound good as a concept, but you really don't know if it is or not until it's actually done. I find this much less annoying than sites that hijack the scroll bar to do their own cool scrolling. For somethings, it's neat. Kind of like some Flash sites did some cool things. It's the ones that try to be like the cool thing but have a totally different site where it just doesn't fit. Those are the really annoying sites. I don't like a lot of the way lots of other developers have implemented things. I just make a note of something I found annoying, and avoid doing that thing on my projects. I'm only able to do things I'm in control of, and try hard to recognize when it's not in my control and just move along. I don't let it ruin my day.
Also, the human eye sees flicker much better at the periphery than in the central area. The Rod receptor cells respond more rapidly than the Cone color-sensitive cells, and the peripheral vision is also more tuned to quick motions (much advantage in having faster detection of peripheral motion, so positive selection evolutionary pressure).
Areas with lots of thunderstorms. Also more rural areas with long power lines with few taps off for customers — the long runs are both exposed to many nearby strikes and accept induction well, and the few customers are fewer power sinks to dissipate the spike. So, you're more likely to get hit, and hit harder.
In urban areas you probably can just have the whole-house surge protector and skip the rest, since that protects all costly electronics not just a single device. With just a surge strip on the PC I'd say you're a tad under-protected, yeah.
Incidentally whole-house surge protection is now required by code in new houses. Existing buildings aren't required to upgrade, but by my reasoning what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
I would recommend a circuit surge protector in urban areas.
Lightning getting through some structure and hitting the electric lines happens. Even when they are buried. It's less of a problem when the ground absorbs a lot of the power before it even get into copper, but it's even less of a problem if there's some cheap device that will burn and protect you from it.
And the transparency must be real-time and MUST include the full dox on beneficial owner of the contract/bet, with steep jailtime for falsification/fronting, etc.. They can even say it is for tax purposes — they win that bet, they should pay income tax (and be able to deduct the costs of their losing bets against that specific income type).
I want to know if a bunch of senators or DOD personnel bet on event X, and I want journalists and OSINT watchers to know it in realtime. That gives everyone information while naturally eliminating most of the advantage of insider trading, since nearly everyone will pile into the same trade and the odds/payoff will come closer to the reality.
Knowing who is making the bets doesn’t prevent mildly corrupt officials from driving the outcome that’s going to win them some cash.
Knowing that high-level DOD official were betting on us invading Iran does us no good if the only reason we invaded Iran was so they could win their long-odds bet. Sure, we can try and shame them, but now they're rich and we're fighting another middle-east war.
What is the current method that exists which stops CEO/executives from short selling their own company's stock, then driving that company's value down (which is easy to accomplish)?
Why can't that same method be used to prevent or indict gov't insiders who tries to do the same?
That same method is the SEC (Securities Exchange Commission) and is it widely regarded as simultaneously ineffective and heavy-handedly overreaching.
It is an inherently hard problem to identify insider trading when trading securities, or in this case, bets/contracts, doesn't have participant identification and transparency problems
The same solution would be best for both — everyone can trade freely with the sole caveat that all ultimately beneficial owners are fully identified and the trades are transparently published in real-time.
Braying about "free market" when in the actual market players can hide their identities and covertly manipulate it, while having an underfunded agency supposedly tracking them down after the fact, is just a farce.
A solution structured so it naturally and dynamically self-corrects is far better than an enforcement bolted-on after the fact. And yes, there would still be enforcement of requiring transparency to enforce proper identification.
> Knowing that high-level DOD official were betting on us invading Iran does us no good if the only reason we invaded Iran was so they could win their long-odds bet.
Of course it does, if we’re willing to do ever-so-slightly more than jerk off on TikTok about it.
If so, it is customarily permissible to use rhetoric and sarcasm to more strongly emphasize a point. Or, to leave the conclusion as an exercise for the reader.
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