91–97 of 97 posts
This metaphor of the electrolyte solution is nice. Obviously an allusion to a seemingly innocuous service which ends up tracking every aspect of one's life.
(disclaimer: I work for Google. My words are not theirs) At first I thought "oh. Google fan fiction. This is what we have come to." After a moment, though, I realized that this article isn't really any different from the other hyperventilating blog posts that have appeared all over HN recently. I'm not saying that these aren't important topics to discuss, but everything I've read recently has come off as a prurient p…
I think IBM watson is showing us that it's possible to build a great search engine with no privacy issues.
The biggest blunder of this article is how they convey Google. Do they know a little more about me than I like? Sure. But so does Facebook, Microsoft, and OkCupid!. The difference here is that if I want out of Google, I simply go to the dashboard and erase my history. I don't know how deep their erasure goes, but it is certainly more comforting than what any other company offers. Facebook holds your info for a week a…
I think this might be intended as protection against attacks on your account. If someone gets ahold of your password and deletes your account, it's nice that you'll be able to restore it for some time after, isn't it? I agree that the wording of the e-mails they send when this happens is unfortunate.
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I always get a chuckle out of the very idea of "post scarcity". Like there won't be some guy who wants to shovel an entire solar system (or two) into his replicator to make a really cool Dyson yacht, or yacht fleet. Or just flat out enjoys going "Dark Phoenix" and destroying a few stars like shooting cans for target practice. Humans will never have all they want, even though we have enough for subsistance. Only a few…
It is heavily alluded in the novel that culture citizen have been genetically engineered somewhat to smooth their personality. Except for extreme shyness, they would seem like charismatic well balanced individual (source wikipedia I think). Even the language they speak has been engineered. So in culture world, nobody would be deviant enough to want to do those things. It is a bit like star trek, there must have been…
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Yes, it is on a different level -- that was just the first example that popped in mind (and I hesitated posting it, worrying that I could offend someone else). But you have the same problem with any analogy; there are always differences between the two items being compared. I think the problem for me is that I see it as a software bug, and since it is a bug that comes to light based on personal actions / data, it get…
Part of the issue, I suspect, is that we aren't as forgiving of computers (and in particular, ad servers) as we are of people, due to different expectations. If you went to a video rental store (back when those existed) and the guy recommended 3 videos to you and 1 was a clunker, you wouldn't be annoyed. But when your Tivo does the same you may not be as patient, even though it's making rational decisions based on yo…
Can you speak for yourself? You're kinda proving the point here. Know yourself, but don't pretend to know or speak for others... that goes for everybody, orders of magnitude more so for corporations.
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> Technically, when an AdSense client targets their ads only to North American users who expressed an interest in , Google didn’t “sell that user’s personal information,” but… whomever is on the other side of that ad, once clicked — and their partners — have just paid Google to find a user who likely has . > Isn’t that selling personal information? Actually, if not legally? No. Its selling the service of advertising…
"People for whom some fact holds" IS the very definition of personal information. What's missing from the GP's example is showing the ad for medication to the same user on a later unrelated search. On any given search, I would expect an ad-sponsored search provider to give me ads related to the current search term. If the seach provider stores my search history and serves me ads from previous search terms, that is pe…
Yes, but selling the service of showing something to those people isn't selling personal information, because the entity selling the service keeps the personal information and uses it on behalf of the entity purchasing the service.
Selling personal information is disclosure. Selling a service in which the seller uses personal information to provide the service is use. There is a meaningful difference between an entity using personal information and an entity disclosing personal information to third parties. There can be legitimate grounds to be concerned about either, but its not helpful to conflate them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Part of the issue, I suspect, is that we aren't as forgiving of computers (and in particular, ad servers) as we are of people, due to different expectations. If you went to a video rental store (back when those existed) and the guy recommended 3 videos to you and 1 was a clunker, you wouldn't be annoyed. But when your Tivo does the same you may not be as patient, even though it's making rational decisions based on yo…
If you went to a video rental store (back when those existed) and the guy recommended 3 videos to you and 1 was a clunker, you wouldn't be annoyed. Can you speak for yourself? You're kinda proving the point here. Know yourself, but don't pretend to know or speak for others... that goes for everybody, orders of magnitude more so for corporations.